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THE STORY OF IONA

PRINTED BY

GEORGE WATERSTON & SONS

FOR

DAVID DOUGLAS.

LONDON . . . SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT AND CO., LTD.
CAMBRIDGE . . BOWES AND BOWES.
GLASGOW . . . JAMES MACLEHOSE AND SONS.

i. ST. MAKTIN'S CROSS: EAST FACE. Frontispiece.

BY THE REV.

EDWARD CRAIG TRENHOLME

M.A.

F THE SOCIETY OF ST. JOHN THE EVANGELIST
COWLEY

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
FROM PHOTOGRAPHS & DRAWINGS

BY

FRANCES M. RICHMOND

AND MAPS

EDINBURGH: DAVID DOUGLAS
1909

I !its Reserved

Dft
HO

nr?

TO

THE SCOTTISH
FELLOWSHIP OF ST. JOHN

AND

IN MEMORY OF
H. S. R.

PREFACE.

WHILE stationed in lona in the winter of 1907-8, I was
asked to write something about the celebrated island for
others, and began to do so with the scenes before my eyes
day by day. It was my third visit, and of course I had
already discovered the charm and interest of the place.
My friends the islanders told me about their home and
its traditions, and some other friends of my Community
gave us books. Since my recall from Scotland I have
read in the Bodleian Library, and have also been kindly
helped by some Gaelic linguists and other specialists, to
whom, as well as to my informants in lona, I am most
grateful. All the carved stones which are mentioned were
verified for me on the spot last summer, and those in St.
Oran's Chapel and Burial-ground are numbered in the
order in which they then lay.

A simply written bibliography will be found at the end
of the volume. The literature of the subject begins with
such primary early authorities as Adamnan, Bede, the old
Irish and Scots annals, and the ancient Lives of the Saints.
There is a series of interesting descriptions of lona by
visitors from 1549 onwards, especially Dean Monro,
Sacheverell, Martin, and Pennant. Among more recent
books, the late Dr. Skene's Celtic Scotland and the late
Bishop Reeves's annotated Adamnan are storehouses of
historical information and references.

Adamnan the Abbot, writing in lona Monastery more
than 1 200 years ago, felt it necessary to begin his Life

viii PREFACE.

of St. Columba with an apology for the Gaelic names
which he had to use, because he thought his native tongue
sounded harsh compared with other languages. However
this may be, it is an unpronounceable language to strangers,
and yet it is quite necessary to retain vernacular place-
names in such a book as the present one. I have used
modern Anglicised forms for some Irish and Highland
personal names. The O' of Irish names is for Ua, and
means grandson or descendant of so-and-so, while Mac
means son, or, as part of a surname, descendant.

Some of Miss Richmond's photographs were taken
specially for the book in 1908, and others before it was
planned. They will recall lona or make it known — as the
case may be with the reader — in a way that words cannot
compass. Even from the little that is said of Legh
Richmond at the end of Chapter XL, it will be seen how
becoming it is that his granddaughter should render us
this service. Rubbings of some of the richly-carved grave-
stones have been reproduced by photography and the same
"half-tone" process as the other plates. The designs on
the title-page are examples of old Irish monastic art from
the Book of Kells, the eagles being emblematic of St. John
the Evangelist.

The unchanging coasts and hills shown in the views
from nature are the very lona of Columba and Aidan ;
of Adamnan, the scholar saint, and Cillene, the anchorite
abbot ; of Connachtach, " choicest of scribes," and the
martyr Blathmac — insula sanctorum^ mater ecclesiarum.

Since the book has been in type, I have been shown that
what is said as to the age of the old buildings in lona needs
qualification. The Cathedral is spoken of on p. 26 as " built
about the year 1200," and elsewhere the hitherto accepted

PREFACE. IX

opinion is adopted that the church is a later reconstruction
of a building of that period. But through the kind interest
of my publisher, Mr. Douglas, I have now received a weighty
communication from Mr. Thomas Ross, joint author of
Messrs. MacGibbon & Ross's works on Scottish architecture,
who is convinced by his latest examination of the buildings
that " practically there is only one period for the Cathedral
and Nunnery, and that about the end of the I4th century."
The tower piers, which have been especially claimed for the
earlier date, have characteristics which Mr. Ross considers
decisive against it ; in which case the now destroyed inscrip-
tion which has been recorded as "Donaldus O'Brolchan
fecit hoc opus " has either been misread, or at least cannot
have the historical connection suggested by Dr. Reeves and
expressed on pp. 113 seq. And while agreeing with Dr.
Honeyman's views as to the former existence of a crypt
(see pp. 114^^.), Mr. Ross assigns it and the arches which
remain in the north wall of the choir to the same late period
in general. He suggests a connection between the building
of the Cathedral and the benefactions which were bestowed
on lona at this time by two successive Lords of the Isles,
John of Isla and his son Donald. Mr. Ross thinks that some
details in the Cathedral are borrowed from Ireland, and
perhaps also the plan of the smaller buildings lying to the
east, though these he considers to be also late in date.

E. C. T.

COWLEY ST. JOHN, OXFORD,
Eastertide, 1909.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER PAGE

I. THE ISLAND AND SURROUNDINGS, . . . i

II. THE PICTS AND SCOTS, 10

III. ST. COLUMBA COMES TO lONA, . . . .20

IV. THE ABBOT AND MISSIONARY, ... 34
V. ST. COLUMBA'S LABOURS AND REST, . . 42

VI. THE CENTURY AFTER COLUMBA, ... 53

VII. THE EIGHTH AND NINTH CENTURIES, . . 62

VIII. THE LATER CELTIC PERIOD, .... 72

IX. THE BENEDICTINES AND THE LORDS OF THE

ISLES, 82

X. To MODERN TIMES, 90

XI. TOPOGRAPHY, FROM DuN-I TO CUL RI EIRINN, 98
XII. THE CATHEDRAL AND SURROUNDINGS, . .113

XIII. FROM REILIG ODHRAIN TO MARTYRS' BAY, . 123

XIV. THE CARVED STONES. CONCLUSION, . .132

AFIENDICES

I. UCHD AlLIUN : AN OLD IRISH POEM, . . 155

II. ALTUS PROSATOR: ST. COLUMBA'S HYMN, . 156

III. THE GAELIC PLACE-NAMES ON THE MAP OF

IONA, 162

IV. THE ISLAND OF STAFFA, 164

BIBLIOGRAPHY, 165

GENERAL INDEX, . . . . 169

FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS.

PLATE PAGE

1. ST. MARTIN'S CROSS : EAST FACE, . . . Frontispiece

2. THE WHITE SANDS AND MULL. The drifted sands at

the north-east end of the island. The smooth beach
at the water's edge on the right is Traigh Bhan, or,
more fully, Traigh Bhan nam Manach, White Beach
of the Monks, the traditional site of the last Danish
massacre. In the view of Mull, Bourg headland at
the mouth of Loch Sgridain is on the right, and the
mouth of Loch nan Ceall towards the left, with the
peak of Ben More between, 4

3. THE HERMIT'S CELL. Stones have been piled on its

circuit, and the ground is dotted with clumps of
heather.. The two basalt islets which lie two miles
out can be faintly distinguished on the cloudy
western sea, ........ 8

THE GREAT BOULDER. This seems to be the stone
Moelblatha, or Blathnat, which was in the refectory
of St. Columba's monastery. Cladh an Diseart
hermitage was in the lower field to the right, . 8

4. THE SPOUTING CAVE. Beyond where the Cave is

spouting, on the south-west height of lona, is the

site of Cam Cul ri Eirinn, overlooking the sunlit sea, 1 2

5. IONA FROM THE SOUND. The north end of the village,

with Reilig Odhrain above; the House of Retreat,

the Cathedral, and Dun-I, 16

6. THE CATHEDRAL AND ST. ORAN'S. This photograph

was taken before the Cathedral had been roofed and
restored, X6

7. SUNSET FROM THE NORTH SHORE, . 20

FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS. Xlll

PLATE PAGB

8. FLAT ROCK OF PORT NA CURAICH. Weather and tide

permitting, the rock in the foreground forms a kind
of natural landing-place on the shore of the bay
where St. Columba disembarked, . . . . 26

9. MOUTH OF PORT NA CURAICH. Showing the jutting

crag on the east, and in the foreground part of the
pebble beach, ........ 26

10. CNOC-CULPHAIL CROFT. A Highland crofter's home, with

a view of the north-east end of the island and the

hills of Mull, ........ 30

11. THE ANGELS' HILL FROM THE MACHAIR. "The little

hill of the angels was soft with the short mountain
turf, and sweet with wild thyme and euphrasy, the
fitter for angels to visit him in his night-long prayer."
G. Congreve, 34

12. THE CAMUS AND CEANN NA CREIGE. The latter name,

meaning Head of the Rock, is given to the beginning
of the cliffs south of Camus Cuil an t-Saimh, the large
western bay. Plate 4 affords a more extended pros-
pect of the same coast, ...... 34

13. COTTAGES BY ST. RONAN'S BAY, 42

14. PLOUGHING BESIDE THE SOUND. The herring gulls are

interested spectators. The scene is in the field by
the Cathedral. Over the water, Bourg cliff shows
faint above the low granite rocks of the Ross, . 50

15. TORR ABB AND THE CATHEDRAL. Torr Abb is the

rocky hillock in front of the Cathedral. The ruins
of the Benedictine monastery and the " Bishop's
House " appear above it, and the field by the Sound
on the extreme left is the site of the hermitage which
was called the Disert, ...... 54

1 6. PORT A' GHOIRTEIN BHIG AND CORR EILEAN. This

" Bay of the Little Field " is on the north-west coast,
to the west of Dun Bhuirg. The rock-mass standing
out in the calm sea is Corr Eilean, which is marked
on the map at p. 163, . . . . . . 58

XIV FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS.

PAG«

17. PORT NAM MAIRTIR: BAY OF THE MARTYRS, . . 66

1 8. ST. JOHN'S CROSS AND ST. COLUMBA'S TOMB. This

is the west face of a broken cross, behind which
are seen old gravestones and the doorway of the
little oratory called "St. Columba's Tomb," . . 70

19. ST. MARTIN'S CROSS FROM THE CATHEDRAL. The view

is through the west door of the ruined nave, . . 74

20. MACLEAN'S CROSS : EAST FACE, 82

21. ST. ORAN'S CHAPEL: WEST DOOR, .... 88

22. ABBOT MACKINNON'S MONUMENT, . . . . 92

23. MACKINNON'S CROSS, 92

24. IN THE CATHEDRAL, LOOKING SOUTH-EAST, . . 96

25. CHOIR OF CATHEDRAL FROM SOUTH TRANSEPT. Before

alteration, . . . . . . . .104

26. CHOIR-AISLE OF CATHEDRAL, 104

27. THE GORGE BY THE PIGEONS* CAVE, . . . . IIO

28. CAPITALS OF PILLARS IN CATHEDRAL, . . . .116

29. CAPITALS OF AISLE PILLARS, 116

30. REILIG ODHRAIN. The gravestones on the Ridge of the

Kings and Ridge of the Chiefs, in the middle of the
cemetery, are enclosed within iron railings, . . 124

31. THE NUNNERY FROM THE SOUTH-EAST, .... 128

32. CATHEDRAL SEDILIA AND ABBOT MACKENZIE'S MONU-

MENT, I34

33. CARVED BOULDERS. One from Gill Chainnich and the

other from near Cladh an Diseart, . . . .136

34. GRAVESTONES AND ST. JOHN'S CROSS. This view is

from the east, the opposite of Plate 18, and shows the
curious hutch of flat stones at the foot of the cross-
shaft, and an " Irish cross " in low relief on one of the
gravestones, I38

35. ST. MARTIN'S CROSS : WEST FACE, 140

FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS. XV

T« TAGS

36. GRAVESTONES IN ST. ORAN'S CHAPEL AND THE REILIG.

This and the next two series of illustrations are from

rubbings, ......... 142

37. GRAVESTONES IN REILIG ODHRAIN, . . . .144

38. GRAVESTONES IN THE REILIG AND NUNNERY, . . 146

39. MACLEAN'S CROSS : WEST FACE, 150

40. STAFFA: OFF FINGAL'S CAVE, 164

DRAWINGS IN THE TEXT.

PAGE

STONE CIST ON SOUTH SIDE IN "ST. COLUMBA'S TOMB," . 69

CONSECRATION CROSS IN SOUTH TRANSEPT OF CATHEDRAL, . 115

EFFIGY OF NEIL OF THE Ross, 135

A CELTIC CROSS-SLAB, 139

EFFIGY OF MACQUARRIE OF ULVA, 141

GRAVESTONE OF THE CELTIC PERIOD, 142

EFFIGY QF MACLEAN OF DUART, 146

EFFIGY OF MACLEAN OF COLL, 148

TWO CARVED SLABS IN THE NUNNERY, . . . .153

MAPS AND PLANS.

EARLY DIVISIONS OF NORTH BRITAIN, 45

LANDMARKS OF THE MONASTERY, 100

GROUND-PLAN OF THE ABBEY, . . . . . .114

MODERN IONA, 163

THE STORY OF I O N A.
CHAPTER I.

THE ISLAND AND SURROUNDINGS.

T is the imperishable glory of lona to have been Columba's
sle, whence the pure and glowing light of the Gospel arose
ike a morning star on the pagan darkness of the Picts,
md shone until it merged into the full day of early Scottish
Christianity.

lona was at first called lou (pronounced something like
feo in English), to judge from the famous Life of St.
3olumba by his eighth successor, Adamnan, who makes a
^atin adjective from the name by adding a, thus calling
he island loua (or lova) insula, the island of lou. Other
)ld spellings are Eo, Ea, la, lo. In the ninth century the
jerman monk Walafrid Strabo writes in a Latin poem on
he martyrdom of St. Blathmac (to be referred to later) —

" Far on the Pictish coast is seen a sea-girded islet
Floating amidst the billows ; Eo the name that it beareth.
There the saint of the Lord, Columba, rests in the body."

lou is considered to be the original Pictish name, and
"nay signify corn,* or more precisely barley, which was the
:orn of these bleak regions. Barley was called eo-rna by
:he Gaels of Ireland, and probably something similar by
:heir cousins the Picts, hordeum in the Latin of Italy, and
vava in the Sanskrit of India, all from some word used by
:he common Aryan ancestors of these races. Java, the

* Dr. Whitley Stokes on the Irish Annals, s.v. Eo. See the Bibliography at
:he end of the book.

A

2 THE STORY OF IONA.

name of the great fertile island of the East Indies, may
thus mean the same as lou, the little fertile island of the
Hebrides. lona and the larger outlying island of Tiree
were both noted for fruitfulness in barley, and there is little
doubt that Tiree, in Gaelic Tiriedh (pronounced teerea\
means Land (tir) of Corn. But there is less to go upon
in lou, Eo, Ea, and therefore less certainty.

I, pronounced like E in English, is the ordinary Gaelic
name for lona now. Sometimes it was written Y, and as
Gaelic words often have an h prefixed according to the laws
of the language, we get the aspirated forms Hi, Hy, and
Hii, the last being used by the Venerable Bede just after
Adamnan's time.

When St. Columba's glory had made the name of tl
island famous, his own name of Columkill (Columba of tl
Church) was often joined to I, making I-chaluim-chille
Gaelic, Anglicised as Icolmkill (I of Colum of the Churcl
The local describer of lona in the Statistical Account
Scotland published in 1798 says that the island "is alwaj
called I, except when the speaker would wish to lay
emphasis upon the word, then it is called Icolumkill." Tl
represents the present Gaelic usage among the islanders.

Down to modern times lona often went by the name
Innis nan Druineach, and an old burial-ground (to be mer
tioned later) is called Cladh nan Druineach. The meanii
seems to be Innis or Island, and Cladh or Burial-place, of tl
Sculptors, for "druineach" signifies a "cunning workman'
of one kind or another, and in this case would doubtle
refer to the old-time stone-carvers of lona, so much of whos
beautiful handiwork still remains. Another Argyllshii
island, Innis Draoinich or Isle of Sculptors, on Loch Aw<
is so called for a similar reason, "draoinich" being a mer
variation of spelling for " druineach." * This name of lor

* There is a note on Innis Draoinich and its mediaeval stone-carvers
Carmichael's Carmina Gadelica (II., p. 261). Some monuments remain in
Cistercian ruin on a neighbouring island. It seems very like lona's case.

THE ISLAND AND SURROUNDINGS. 3

s written by the traveller Pennant, who visited the island
n 1772, as " Inish Drunish," while the writer in the New
Statistical Account, 1847, spells it Innis-nan-Druidhneach,
l.nd adopts the common interpretation, Island of the Druids.
Phe story that lona was a sacred island of the Druids
before St. Columba came seems to have sprung up at a
Luite late period, though there are hillocks and water -
[prings whose names savour of the old religion of the
land.

The English name lona arose through a mistake which
J.ppears in mediaeval documents. Adamnan's loua Insula
\va.s erroneously transcribed as lona Insula, and so by an
Irror of one letter the name lona got into Latin and English
lise, though not into the Gaelic language. Notwithstanding
Ihis haphazard origin, lona is a beautiful name, and has won
I . firm place for itself.

lona's geographical position can be seen on the map at

page 45, and can be effectively realized on the spot by a

Lurvey of the wide and splendid view from the northern hill

If the island. It lies in the midst of the Hebrides, or Western

sles of Scotland, and these varied islands, far and near, great

I nd small, with their vast enchanting setting of ocean and

Iky, compose the whole of the prospect. A quarter of the

ircle is an unbroken sweep of water, beyond whose horizon

reland is distant seventy miles, and Labrador 2000. Of the

Islands which form most of the rest of the ring, all that were

nhabited have known the monks of lona, for this was their

lome mission field. To begin with Tiree, the long, low

sland whose higher points appear at intervals above the

/aves twenty miles north-west. Here lona had more than

>ne monastery, and some of St. Columba's Irish friends also

ounded religious settlements. Many traces of the Celtic

Church remain in Tiree. It is sometimes possible to discern

. speck on the horizon more than twice as far out as Tiree.

This is Barra Head, the southernmost islet of the long outer

ringe of the Hebrides, a rock 600 to 700 feet high, with a

4 THE STORY OF IONA.

lighthouse. When the dusk of evening settles on the ocean,
Skerryvore revolving light flashes out, ten miles south of
Tiree, where murderous rocks lie.

More to the north of lona are the bare and rocky
Treshnish Isles, and Coil's broken outline in the distance.
Beyond the Treshnishes, forty miles north of lona, rises the
mountain island of Rum, where an lona monk lived as a
hermit in the seventh century. St. Donnan's Isle of Eigg is
near. One summit in Rum stands out as a sharp peak, to
the right of which the Cuillin hills in Skye are visible on a
clear day. This takes us well into what was Pictland in St
Columba's time, and the scene of his missionary labours.
The Cuillins, sixty miles away and reaching 3230 feet in
height, are the most distant and the loftiest mountains in
sight; Ben More, in Mull, is 3170 feet; Rum attains to
2660, and the highest peak of Jura in the south-east to 2570
feet.

Mull is the large mountainous island between lona and the
mainland of Argyllshire, and its varied coast and more distant
hills where the red deer roam fill most of the eastward vie\
The islands of Gometra and Ulva lie against the projectii
coast of Mull above lona, and in front of Gometra, Staffa's
basalt cliff-face rises from the sea. Following down the Mul
coast (as it appears in Plate 2), a steep break in the hill
line marks where an arm of the sea runs into Mull, almos
cutting it in two. This inlet is called Loch nan Ceall (Loc
of the Churches), from the number of ancient churches that
stood on its shores. The remains of one are in Inchkennet
a small island seen from lona in the mouth of the loch am
named after a great Irish saint, a friend of Columba. Sii
Allan Maclean entertained Dr. Johnson and Boswell at hi
house in Inchkenneth in 1773, and brought them over to visit
lona.

The centre of the view of Mull is Ben More's cloudy
summit, overtopping Bourg headland, a dark terraced mass
of trap at the mouth of Loch Sgridain, another arm of the

IV.

THE ISLAND AND SURROUNDINGS. 5

sea which penetrates the island. South of the loch mouth
(which ends the view in Plate 2), the south of Mull is pro-
jected westward in a long tongue of land called the Ross,
off the end of which lies lona, separated by a Sound a mile
in width. The granite rocks of the end of the Ross form the
coast opposite lona, in the foreground of the spectator's view.
They are very striking when silhouetted in black between the
pallid sea and sky of early dawn, or when they glow rosy red
in the warm light of the setting sun. Now and then in hours
of daylight a great black-backed gull sails like an eagle
along their bare escarpment, surveying the sweep of waters
beneath him.

To the south-east, the three rounded mountains rising side
by side above the low line of the Ross are the Paps of Jura,
thirty miles away. Isla is next to Jura, and Colonsay in
front. The Ross itself ends with Erraid Isle, on which is seen
the lighthouse station for Dubh lartach and Skerryvore
Lights, and off Erraid a high outlying rock-islet, Eilean nam
Muc, stands sentinel over the southern entrance to the Sound,
with the Torran Rocks lying beyond. Dubh lartach* is a
lighthouse perched on a solitary sea rock twelve miles south-
south-west of lona, and from it to Tiree nothing breaks the
sweep of the sea-line.

lona itself is a pleasant little island, three miles and a
quarter long from north to south, and a mile across the
middle. It embraces much variety in so small a compass.
There are hill and dell, wet heathery upland and fertile plain,
sea-cliff and silver sand. Only a few small trees exist, ail
near man's habitations. The natural features of the island
and surroundings are so preponderant and so unchanging
that they must have worn the same aspect to Columba's eye
as to ours. The present population of the island is about
200. If we spirit away, in imagination, their little village
and more scattered homesteads and the mediaeval abbey,

* This seems to mean Black (Rock) of the West, as Colonsay people might
call it. See Dhu Heartach in Johnston's Place-Names.

6 THE STORY OF IONA.

and call up instead the huts of the Irish missionaries clustered
hard by their wooden church, we have lona before us very
much as it must have been in the sixth century.

The winter climate is mild and humid, frost infrequent,
snow seldom seen nearer than Mull's mountain tops, although
fierce winter gales sweep over the bare little isle and the foam-
ing waves sometimes prevent communication with its shores
for several days at a time. The sea enters much into the life
of lona. The loud or gentler surging of the waves on the shore
fills the ear day and night. The farmland is manured with
seaweed in winter, and in spring white flocks of gulls flutter
after the plough on the dark fresh-turned earth. Flounders
are large and abundant in the Sound, and the fish known as
saith is taken in considerable numbers. Fishing is, however,
only a pastime or a minor occupation with the islanders,
whose chief work is agriculture. The arable land is in a belt
across the middle of the island and a tract overlooking the
Sound north of the village and Cathedral. It is held of the
Duke of Argyll in small crofts and a few larger farms, and
produces potatoes of special excellence. The north-west and
south are higher and uninhabited, and sheep and shaggy
Highland cattle feed there among the crags and heather.
The wool shorn from the sheep sets the busy spinning-wheels
going by the cottage firesides in winter.

The island is bright with flowers in their season, and its
Saint has his own, for the little yellow St John's Wort
(Hypericum) is Columkill's Flower in Gaelic folklore. Larks
trill from the sky as they do over English meadows, and
there are other well-known land birds, but those of the shore
and the sea are the most characteristic. The blue rock-dove
(Columba livia] haunts the southern cliffs. The heron and
curlew can be espied along the shore, and pretty little oyster-
catchers, named in Gaelic gille-brigde (servant of Bride).
The dark cormorant is the most conspicuous sea-fowl, but
there are other interesting ones, such as the black and white
eider-duck in winter and the diving gannet in summer

THE ISLAND AND SURROUNDINGS. 7

Seals come sometimes to the lonelier beaches. The pellucid
rock-pools are bright and animated with tiny life.

Such names as Lag an Dobhrain (Otter's Hollow), Uamh
nan Sgarbh (Cormorants' Cave), Aoineidh an Taghain (Cliff
of the Polecat), tell of wild life, past or present. Besides
some of the weasel tribe there are rabbits on the island.
Vipers (less correctly called adder) are unknown, although
they are found on the Mull side of the Sound, and this
species of snake is a good swimmer. The absence of vipers
from lona was marked by the early monks, and Adamnan
tells how Columba, in his last blessing of the island, declared
that their venom should hurt none therein so long as God's
commandments were kept.

Although, as has been said, lona can have changed but
little in aspect since it became known historically, it bears
written in its structure the records of great prehistoric
changes. At one time — perhaps when man had hardly
yet appeared upon earth — forest trees grew on the tract
between the Cathedral and the base of Dun-I, where their
trunks, " as big as a man's body," are embedded in the peat
of the Lochan Mor.* My informant — who took note of
these trees when cutting peats — found also, at a depth of
about six feet, a bottom of white sand underlying the bog,
showing that these sands, which now form such beautiful
beaches here and there on the shore of the island, were
once much more extensive, before the time of the trees,
lona's white sands, according to the late Duke of Argyll,
are formed chiefly of the bleached and crumbled shells of
the landsnails, which still feed in innumerable multitudes
on the herbage of the grassy plains.

The great ice age has also left its mark, for the glaciers
from the hills of Mull reached out over the Sound, and, as
they melted, boulders of red granite, scraped from the Ross,
dropped out of the ice along the eastern shore of lona, where

* Similar remains are known in the peat of Uist and other now treeless
islands.

8 THE STORY OF IONA.

they still lie, both large and small. By far the largest is a
gigantic flat block, 27 feet by 18, now all grey and lichen-
covered, lying a quarter of a mile north of the Cathedral,
midway between the road and the shore (Plate 3). We
shall see later that this boulder has a further interest in
connection with the site of St. Columba's monastery.

Geologists tell us that the islands nearest lona were
formed in the great earth-changes of the Tertiary epoch,
when the face of the globe attained more or less its present
configuration. The granite of Mull, and the basalt of Staffa
and the Dutchman's Cap and the other singular-looking
Treshnish Isles burst in molten eruptions out of the earth.
The basalt islands are all that is left above water of an
enormous plain of hardened lava, the rest of which has been
broken up and engulfed again by the devouring sea. All
this took incalculable ages of time, and organic life
alternately flourished and was overwhelmed. Leaves of
forest trees distinctive of the Tertiary age are found pressed
and recognizable in the rocks at Ardtun, near Bunessan, in
the Ross of Mull.

lona itself is enormously older than these adjoining
islands, and than the highest mountains and most of the
dry land of the globe. We have reversed the usual
geological order, and so come now to the beginning of
lona, which is almost part of the beginning of the earth
itself. When our planet, from a flaming mass of com-
bustion like the sun, shrivelled into a globe with a solid
crust, and the first oceans condensed in the hollows of its
hot surface — then it was that the Archaean rocks of which
lona and the Outer Hebrides consist were formed on the
sea-bottom. They contain no fossils ; for, so far as is
known, no living creature as yet existed in the desolate
waste of waters or on the primeval land. They are hard,
rugged, and twisted ; and in lona, as elsewhere, marble
has been developed by the vast heat and pressure they
have undergone. The lona marble, which is quarried in

THE IIKK.MIT'S CELL (i-. 106).

THE GREAT BOULDER.

Pare 8.

THE ISLAND AND SURROUNDINGS. 9

the south-east of the island, is a fine ornamental stone,
whose prevailing colour is green, from the mineral serpentine.
It is described in The Quarry, December 1907, as "an
ophicalcite, resembling the green Connemara marble and
the Verde Antico of the ancients," and as suitable for
interior but not exterior use in the British climate. Pebbles
of green serpentine, sometimes very fine and translucent, are
washed up on the shore of the Bay of the Coracle, south-
west of the quarry. They are the "lona stone," which is
carved into small ornaments, and used to be thought a
preservative against drowning.

It may here be mentioned that the red granite of the
Ross of Mull is the chief material of the Cathedral and
the ruined ecclesiastical buildings of lona. In recent times
it has been used for important work in London ; but it is
difficult to ship it from this iron-bound and stormy coast.

CHAPTER II.

THE PICTS AND SCOTS.

THE natives of lona and the other Western Isles are of the
same race as the Highlanders of the mainland, and akin to
the Irish and the Manx. All are descended from the ancient
Gaelic Celts, whose language survives among them to a
greater or less extent. The Gaelic Celts were the first wave
to enter the British Isles of the tide of Aryan migration that
rolled westward across Europe in prehistoric times. They
brought the use of metal into Britain, thus inaugurating a
bronze age which is conjectured to have lasted from about
1300 to about 300 B.C. Their bronze ornaments which have
been found exhibit that Celtic art whose Christian develop-,
ment is represented in lona by the patterns carved on the
stone crosses.

The aborigines of the British Isles before the Celts are
considered to have been a Mediterranean race of sun-wor-
shippers related to the Iberians of Spain, and who had got no
farther than the use of stone implements. Numbers of these
implements used by the workmen who shaped and reared the
pillars of Stonehenge have been disinterred there. On this
and astronomical grounds, Stonehenge has been assigned by
Sir Norman Lockyer to somewhere near 6000 B.C., which
would be about the time of the patriarchs Jacob and Joseph.
There are arrangements of standing stones of similar kind
here and there from one end of Great Britain to the other,
including some in Mull.

The Druids of the Gaels are believed to have been origin-
ally the wizard priests of these aborigines. The Gaels over-

THE PICTS AND SCOTS. II

came the earlier race, but feared their sorcerers, and resorted
to them. Thus Druidism passed to the Gaels, among whom
it survived until overthrown in Ireland by St. Patrick and in
Scotland by St. Columba. Most of our knowledge of Gaelic
Druidism is derived from old Irish literature and folklore.*
It is now thought that the Gaulish disciples of Druidism who,
according to Julius Caesar, used to go to Britain to learn the
mysteries, really resorted to Ireland.

The little that Adamnan tells us about the Druids of
Scotland agrees with what is known about the Irish ones.
Thus the Pictish Druids bewitched wells, which were wor-
shipped ; they turned wind and weather against Columba, only
to find that the Saint had greater power ; they enjoyed high
position at the royal court. Adamnan, like other old Irish
writers, calls them magi in his Latin, and conversely druidh
is Gaelic for a magician, soothsayer, " wise man," etc., as may
be seen in the Gaelic Bible.

The Irish Druids were an official class of diviners and
sorcerers, who wore white robes and cut their hair in a magic
tonsure. There is no evidence that they offered human
sacrifice, held the oak in special reverence, or taught trans-
migration of the soul, like the Druids of Gaul. Like other
ancient races of fallen man, they paid adoration to the
rising sun, and both in Ireland and Scotland the feast
of Beltane was kept with sun-worship and fire ceremonies
on the ist of May. It seems probable that a human
victim was originally sacrificed at Beltane, but that this
savage rite became obsolete before Christianity appeared
on the scene.

The Gaels had other gods, who were of the nature of
fairies or bogies. Some were supposed to dwell in wells and
fountains of water, which were accordingly worshipped. St.
Patrick found the wild Irish worshipping and offering gifts to
a well called Slan. St. Columba, on a missionary journey

* Joyce's Social History of Ireland gives an account and references. Cf.
Bury's St. Patrick, and for the origin of Druidism Rhys and Pikorny.

12 THE STORY OF IONA.

among the Picts, heard of a well which caused disease
through being bewitched by Druids, and Adamnan says that
" foolish men whose senses the devil had blinded worshipped
it as a god." The Saint came to the well, blessed it with
uplifted hand while the Druids stood looking on, and then
fearlessly bathed his hands and feet in it and drank of it with
his companions, and thenceforth its waters were beneficent.
If we but knew where it was, we should probably find it
called St. Columkill's Well to this day, like so many in the
west and north of Scotland. Tradition points out both
holy wells and magic wells in lona, which flows with springs
of water.

Earth-gods or demons were worshipped, who dwelt in
smooth round hillocks, and were called sidhe (shee) or sithean
(sheean). The same designation was given to the haunted hill
itself, and sithean now signifies a fairy mound. There are
several sithean mounds in lona, St. Columba's angel hill being
the most famous of them. The sithean were believed in as
fairies when Paganism with its worship of them had become a
thing of the past. The banshee, or woman-spirit, whose
ghostly voice wails for an approaching death among mortals,
is one of the tribe.

The pagan Irish believed in a kind of heavenly fairy-
land, to which a few heroes and other favoured mortals
were carried off, but nothing more ; no future life for all.
It was reserved for Christ to bring "life and immortality
to light through the gospel." Little is known of the modes
of worship among the Gaels, but in some cases they had
stone idols, for St. Patrick had to deal with a famous one.
Animals, such as pigs, were sometimes sacrificed by the
Irish Druids. Worship largely consisted of gifts of food,
and some startling customs of this kind survived or re-
appeared among the Celts of later times. Thus in lona,
down to about the end of the eighteenth century, the " great
porridge " was cast into the western bay with solemn cere-
monies at midnight before Maundy Thursday, as an offering

THE PICTS AND SCOTS. 13

to the sea,* that it might wash up enough seaweed for the
second spring ploughing.

The Druids, with the bards, and brehons or lawyers, were
the teachers of all knowledge in ancient Ireland. Their
religious rites were superstitious and sometimes licentious,
but they doubtless taught also some of the natural virtues
which the heathen value. The name of Druid was not in
itself of evil repute among the early Christians of Ireland,
if we may judge from some old verses written in St.
Columba's name, in which he repudiates the silly charms
and omens of the Druids, and declares Christ to be his
druid. The passage is quoted from Skene's Celtic Scotland.

" It is not with the sreod our destiny is,

Nor with the bird on the top of the twig,

Nor with the trunk of a knotty tree,

Nor with a sordan hand in hand.

*****
" I adore not the voice of birds,

Nor the sreod, nor a destiny on the earthly world,

Nor a son, nor chance, nor woman ;

My druid is Christ the Son of God."

The Gaelic Celts were followed into Britain, after per-
haps a thousand years, by the Cymric Celts, or Britons, now
represented by the Welsh, who crossed from Gaul, it is
thought, about 300 B.C. The Cymri and Gaels are some-
times distinguished as the P and Q Celts, from these sounds
in their respective languages, Q now being written C in
Gaelic. Thus a " son " is ap (anciently map} in Welsh, but
the p became q in Gaelic, giving mac (anciently maq\ and
so with Welsh pen, Gaelic ceann, the "head," and other
words. It is now thought that the ancient Britons did not
adopt Druidism, like the Gaels before them, but kept their
own Aryan religion and gods until — much earlier than the
Gaels — they became Christian.

* This is described in Carmichael's Carmina Gadeltca, and is still told of in
the island.

14 THE STORY OF IONA.

The Gaels of Ireland became known as Scots and the
people of North Britain as Picts, though the geographical
distinction was not absolute, for there were some Picts or
Cruithnigh in northern Ireland. It is a disputed question
whether the Pictish language in Scotland, which gave St.
Columba some trouble in his missionary work, was a sur-
vival of the speech of the ancient inhabitants before the
Gaels, or only old Gaelic in which the change from P
to C had not taken place.

The Romans conquered the Britons, but failed against
the Picts of Caledonia, whom Latin writers describe as
tattooed savages. The Britons became Christian under the
Romans ; Ireland was left alone by them. We now draw
nearer to St. Columba, whose great-great-grandfather, Niall
of the Nine Hostings, was High King of Ireland at royal
Tara at the end of the fourth century after Christ. He
was the heathen king of a heathen land, but in his reign
the British Christian lad Patrick was a slave in Connaught.
King Niall was killed in 405, according to old Irish annals.
Five years later Rome was taken by the Goths, and the
Roman forces in Britain were recalled for more vital duties.
Then followed the famous raiding of Britain by the Picts
and Scots, the latter doubtless crossing over from Ireland
to join their allies where the two countries are only twelve
miles apart, at the south end of Argyllshire. Meanwhile
St. Patrick escaped from Ireland to Gaul, and now he
returned as a missionary bishop, and converted the land
of his former captivity from Druidism to Christ. He
obtained toleration from Leary (Laoghaire), son of Niall,
the reigning king, and baptized his brother Conall, Columba's
great-grandfather, who is said to have been afterwards done
to death by the "old folk." After the conversion of Ireland
came the paganizing of Christian Britain by the Saxon
invaders, and — very important for us — the colonizing of
Argyllshire by the Christian Scots or Irish about the year
500, some twenty years before Columba was born.

THE PICTS AND SCOTS. 15

The houses in Kintyre, the southern peninsula of Argyll-
shire, can be seen from the Antrim coast opposite. Here
the Scots came over, settling in Kintyre and the island of
Isla and spreading northward in the Isles as far as Tiree,
lona, and Mull, and to a corresponding point on the main-
land. They called their state Dalriada from the Irish tribal
district they came from, and later it got the name of Argyll,
Land of the Gael. The Scots eventually became so strong
that the whole country acquired the name of Scotland from
them, but this was not until several centuries after Columba.
In his day Scotland was called Alba or Alban by the Irish
(as it still is in Gaelic). Scotia was a name for Ireland, and
a Scot signified an Irishman, or an Irish settler in Alba.

Dalriada was ruled by a chief, or petty king, probably
under the over-lordship of the king of the Picts, on whose
borders the Scots had settled. The following are the
Dalriadan kings down to Columba's time: — (i) Loarn Mor,
the eldest of the three brothers who headed the migration
from Ireland, and who were the sons of King Ere of the
Irish Dalriada. Loam's name is perpetuated in Lome, the
beautiful district in central Argyllshire among whose lochs
and hills the modern pilgrim to lona comes down by rail to
Oban. Loam's daughter Erca was Columba's grandmother,
and when the Saint came to Scotland he came among his
own kin, although he separated himself in his lonely island
in order to reach the heathen to the north. (2) Fergus,
Loam's youngest brother, succeeded him as king of Dalriada ;
then (3) Domhangart, son of Fergus, and (4) Comgall, and
(5) Gabhran, sons of Domhangart. Gabhran was killed in a
disastrous battle with the Picts three years before St.
Columba's arrival from Ireland, and his nephew Conall, son
of Comgall, was reigning as sixth king, probably in Kintyre
in refuge from the Picts, when Columba came to lona.

There are indications that before this reverse the Scots of
Argyllshire had brought their new home into touch with the
Irish Church. In an ancient life of St. Bridget we hear of

16 THE STORY OF IONA.

her receiving her last communion from a holy priest called
Ninidh, of Mull, an Irishman who seems to have gone to
Mull on the service of God, but to have revisited Ireland in
523, the year St. Bridget died. The name Kilninian, formerly
written Kilnoening, is attached to a place on the Mull coast
north of lona, behind Gometra and Ulva, and this may be
" Ninidh's Church," the scene of his mission.

Two of St. Columba's early friends, the abbots Kieran and
Brendan, reached Scotland before him, though their work
there was but temporary, and they returned to Ireland as
their home. St. Kieran's sojourn was in Kintyre, the oldest
part of the Irish settlement, where he lived and prayed in a
cave which is still pointed out near Campbeltown. He is
the patron saint of Argyllshire, and a hill in lona bears
his name, doubtless from ancient times. He seems to
have extended his activities also to Cornwall, where his name
has become Piran, but his great work was at Clonmacnois, in
central Ireland. Kieran died before Columba left Ireland,
but the latter subsequently paid a visit to Clonmacnois
Monastery, and Adamnan describes the honourable and
affectionate welcome he received there.

St. Columba's other friend, the famous sailor-monk,
Brendan of Clonfert, is said to have established two early
monasteries in places believed to be in the Hebrides — one
in lonely Tiree, about the time that Columba began his
Irish career at Derry, and another in " Ailech," which seems
to be Eileach an Naoimh,* otherwise written Elachnave,
one of the little Garvelloch Isles between Jura and MulL
The neighbouring islet bears the name of Cuil-Bhrannain
(Brendan's Retreat). Elachnave contains a ColumkilFs Well,
and ruins of beehive cells and an oratory of the most ancient
kind, with a burial-ground. We may suppose that this was
first St. Brendan's and afterwards Columba's monastery, for

* Cell of the Saint. Eileach means a stone fort, and also the stone cell of a
monk or hermit, and the name was probably given to this little islet from the
monastic buildings in it.

THE PICTS AND SCOTS. 17

Elachnave is thought to be also the Hinba Island where
Columba had a branch house from lona. The Pictish
troubles of the year 560 may have forced the previous
occupants to abandon the place. On a subsequent occasion,
Brendan and three other sainted abbots came from Ireland
to see Columba, and found him at Hinba.

Ireland was the scene and source of much Christian
activity at this early period. Conversion of life did not go
very deep among the people as a whole, but in many
hearts it did; and one sign of this was a great surrender
of souls to God's service in monastic life. This form of
life St. Patrick introduced from Gaul, whither it had
come direct from its first homes in Egypt and Syria,
at the other end of the Mediterranean. "The sons of
the Scots became monks, and their princes' daughters
virgins of Christ, in numbers more than I can count,"
writes the Apostle of Ireland, in his letter to Coroticus.
Under monastic discipline — which was followed from
the first at lona — all possessions were held in common
by the community, and all the brothers obeyed a chosen
superior, whom they called their abbot or father. They
aimed at imitating the voluntary poverty and lowliness
of our Lord's holy life on earth ; such an imitation as He
called the rich young man to when He invited him, if he
would be perfect, to sell all, and, taking his cross, follow
Him. Monks occupied themselves in psalmody and other
prayer, in the labour necessary for their own support and
for works of charity, and — in the Western Church especially
— in active ministry, education, and missionary work. Some
were ordained priests, while others remained laymen, the
proportion of priests being larger in Western than in Eastern
monasteries. Since these early times, the Religious life —
i.e., the " bound " life of irrevocable dedication — has widened
into a still more varied field of usefulness for both men
and women. Its fundamental principles, however, remain
nothing more nor less than the poverty, chastity, and

1 8 THE STORY OF IONA.

obedience of the parent institutions of the fourth century
in the East.

An old Irish monastery was not a single large building, but
a village of little huts and one or more churches, surrounded
by a wall or rampart, as a boundary beyond which the
brothers might not go save by permission. Such are the
monasteries of Egypt and Syria to this day, and such they
were in the Celtic Church of Ireland and Scotland, including
the early monastery in lona. The Celtic monks also copied
the Eastern fathers of the desert in the severity of their
fastings, night watchings, and other austerities. Between
Patrick's time and Columba's, the great Italian monk St.
Benedict recast and softened the traditional system, but his
influence did not touch the early Celtic Church.

The hermits call for mention, for the Irish annals name
several hermits of lona, and they have left traces of them-
selves in the nomenclature and antiquities of the island. A
hermit is a monk who lives alone, praying, working, fasting,
and going through all his daily round in the solitude of some
little cell and its precincts, sometimes far away from every
one, sometimes near a church or monastery. The word
" monk " means a solitary in Greek, and " hermit " means a
dweller in a desert. The first hermits went into solitude in
the deserts of Egypt in the fourth century, at the end of the
great heathen persecutions, and community monasteries arose
from the gathering together of hermits. Such solitaries still
live near some Greek and Russian monasteries, and there
were many in the old Irish Church. It would be unfair to
say that these ancient hermits were useless, if they prayed
and fasted for the world out of pure hearts. This they did,
and more, for men came to them for spiritual help in their
troubles and sins, and some anchorites thus exercised a very
real ministry to souls. Besides this they studied and wrote,
and worked at useful handicrafts, just as monks in com-
munity did.

There is extant an old Irish rule for anchorites, under the

THE PICTS AND SCOTS. 19

title of the Rule of Columkill.* It is not his work, for he and
his monks were not anchorites, and did not live the life it
describes ; but it may quite well have come from lona at some
later date, when hermit life was one of the features of the
place. The anchorite is looked upon as a monk living in
seclusion from his brethren, yet with recognized ties with
them. " Whatsoever little or much thou possessest of any-
thing, whether clothing, food, or drink, let it be at the senior's
command and disposal, for it is not befitting a religious to
have any distinction of property. . . . Let a fast place with
one door enclose thee. A few religious men to converse with
thee of God and His testament ; to visit thee on days of
solemnity ; to strengthen thee in the testaments of God, and
the narratives of the Scriptures. . . . Let thy servant be a
discreet, religious, not tale-telling man, who is to attend con-
tinually on thee, with moderate labour of course, but always
ready. Yield submission to every rule that is of devotion.
A mind prepared for red martyrdom. A mind fortified and
stedfast for white martyrdom. Forgiveness from the heart to
everyone. Constant prayers for those that trouble thee.
Fervour in singing the office for the dead. . . . Three labours
in the day, viz., prayers, work, and reading. . . . The love of
God with all thy heart and all thy strength. The love of thy
neighbour as thyself."

* Haddan and Stubbs, Vol. II. Part I., pp. 119-121.

CHAPTER III.

ST. COLUMBA COMES TO IONA.

ST. COLUMBA was the son of Feidhlimidh, or Phelim, son of
Fergus, son of Conall Gulban, son of King Niall. Phelim
married Eithne, a lady who was also descended from ancient
kings. They made their home at Gartan, by a mountain lake
in Donegal, where the wolves howled on the hillside in the
winter nights, and there on Thursday the 4th of December,
521, this child was born. The Gaelic folklore of the Hebrides
still speaks of " Thursday, the day of kind Columkill," as an
auspicious day of the week. Eithne had already dreamed
one night of a robe of the hue of all lovely flowers, which an
angel gave her, only to take it again from her reluctant hand
and let it float away through the air, expanding beyond the
plains and overtopping the mountains and forests. Then
came the promise of an illustrious son, who should be num-
bered among the prophets of God and lead innumerable
souls to the heavenly country.

The quaint old Irish Life of the Saint written, it is
supposed, in the tenth century as a sermon for his festival
says : — " Noble then was the family of Columkill in respect
to the world, viz., of the race of Conall, son of Niall, was he.
He was eligible to the kingship of Erin according to family,
and it would have been offered to him if he had not
abandoned it for God."

The child was baptized Colum, " Dove," of which Columba
is the Latin form. A priest, the good Cruithnechan, was
chosen for his foster-father, and received him into his home
to bring him up for his parents. It was the Gaelic custom
for chiefs and nobles thus to jjive their children to be

ST. COLUMBA COMES TO ION A. 21

" fostered " in some humbler home of the clan, whose leaders
and their followers were thus knit together in closer ties.
Adamnan tells how the good priest, on coming home from
the evening service one night, beheld a heavenly light glow-
ing above the babe asleep in his cradle and recognized it as
a sign of his future sanctity. Columba had a brother and
sisters, of whom little is known, but he himself was sent away
to school when old enough, and there gained the name of
Columkill, Colum of the Church, from his love for the house
of God. He was educated in monastery schools at Moville
in the north and Clonard on the Boyne, under two famous
saints of the name of Finnian, with an interval during which
he was taught by the bard Gemman, in Leinster.

At Clonard, Columba is said, by old Irish tradition, to
have had among his school-fellows the saintly Brendan,
Cainnech, and Comgall, who were associated with his after
history, and Kieran, mentioned in the preceding chapter. St.
Cainnech, or Kenneth, was Abbot of Agaboe and a lifelong
friend of Columba, whom he used to visit in Scotland. Both
he and Comgall, like Brendan, are said in their Lives to have
had monasteries in Tiree. The name Kilchainnich, Church
of Kenneth, is found in Tiree and also in lona, where it
designates the site of an ancient chapel and graveyard.
Inchkenneth, St. Kenneth's Isle, lies to the north of lona.

St. Comgall became the founder of the famous monastery
of Beannchor, or Bangor, at the mouth of Belfast Lough,
whence he sent forth the first Irish missionaries to the con-
tinent of Europe — St. Columbanus of Luxeuil and Bobio, St.
Gall, or Cellach, the apostle of Switzerland, and their little
band of companion monks. This mission left Ireland seven
years before St. Columba's death in lona and St. Augustine's
arrival in England, when the three monasteries of Bangor in
Ireland, lona, and the British Bangor on the Dee " were the
three great lights of Celtic Christianity in the British Isles."

From Clonard school Columba went to St. Mobhi's
monastery of Glasnevin, near Dublin, where he probably

22 THE STORY OF IONA.

pronounced his monastic vow, being then about twenty years
of age and a deacon. His abbot sent him to Bishop Etchen
of Clonfad to be ordained to the priesthood, and he speedily
began his career as a leader. Returning to his native north,
he founded his first monastery in 545, the year after Mobhi's
death. The site chosen was at Derry, where he converted to
his purpose a hill-fort given him by his admiring relations of
the clan of the Northern Neills. The young abbot began to
make his mark in the Irish Church, and formed monastic
communities of his increasing disciples at Swords, near
Dublin ; Kells, in Meath ; Durrow, in the south, and else-
where. The eighteen years thus passed seem to be well
summarized by the old Irish Life of the Saint, which relates
his departure for Scotland " when he had made the circuit of
all Erin, and had sown faith and religion ; when numerous
multitudes had been baptized by him ; when he had founded
churches and establishments, and had left in them seniors,
and reliquaries, and relics of martyrs."

Thus as Columba verged towards forty he found himself
at the head of a great religious order, and exposed to the
vicissitudes of public life. His clan were jealous for him,
and in the year 561 they took up arms to avenge certain
wrongs done to him by Diarmaid, the head of the Southern
Neills and King of Ireland. The result was a fierce tribal
battle, in which the king's people were routed with great
slaughter. The Annals of the Four Masters (which place
the affair six years too early) say that " it was in revenge of
the killing of Curnan, son of Aedh, while under the protection
of Columkill, that the Clanna-Neill of the North and the
Connaughtmen gave this battle of Cooldrevny to King
Diarmaid ; and also on account of the false sentence which
Diarmaid passed against Columkill about a book of Finnian
which Columkill had transcribed without the knowledge of
Finnian, when they left it to the award of Diarmaid, who
pronounced the celebrated decision, To every cow belongs
its calf, etc."

ST. COLUMBA COMES TO IONA. 23

This entry of the annalist refers to the popular legend of
the quarrel between St. Finnian of Moville and his pupil for
the possession of a psalter which Columba had copied secretly
from one belonging to Finnian. The fuller story is that
Columba, having raised his clan in anger at the king's two
offences, was charged with the bloodshed that ensued, and
condemned by an ecclesiastical sentence to leave Ireland
and save heathen souls in reparation for the deaths he had
caused. .

The deceit and passion of the psalter incident seem
unlike Columba as we know him from the best authorities,
and in the absence of any really early evidence for the story,
it is best regarded as a romance which has found its way into
the annals. As Dr. Skene observes, it " bears the stamp of
spurious tradition." The outrage of seizing the fugitive from
under Columba's sacred protection is more convincing in
itself and as a cause of battle, whether the Abbot gave any
instigation to his clan in the matter or not. This offence of
Diarmaid's, moreover, is mentioned as the sole cause of the
battle by an earlier annalist, Tighernach.

What happened next can only be conjectured. Adamnan
says that Columba left Ireland two years after the battle of
Cooldrevny, which he mentions merely as a date ; but else-
where he states that Columba was once excommunicated by
a Synod at Teltown, but on his appearing in person some of
the assembly took his part and the sentence was revoked.
Adamnan describes the accusations as trivial and says they
were eventually found to be untrue. He tells neither when
nor why the Synod met, but probably the discomfited king
convened it after Cooldrevny* to punish the cause of his
woes, and the abortive charges against Columba were accusa-
tions of sinful complicity in the battle. Teltown was a royal
seat in King Diarmaid's country of Meath. The legend of
banishment could easily grow from this trial, and there may
have been an element of voluntary penance in his motive for
* Archbp. Ussher thus places it, in his Antiquitates (pp. 469, 531).

24 THE STORY OF IONA.

going to Scotland two years later, but that he was not
under banishment in lona is plain from the freedom with
which he revisited his native shores whenever he had
occasion to do so.

The early accounts represent the voyage to Scotland as
prompted by pure missionary zeal, such as is undoubtedly
manifested in all the after life of the Saint. According to
the Irish Life, " he meditated going across the sea, to preach
the Word of God to the men of Alba, and to the Britons, and
to the Saxons. He went in good spirits until he reached the
place the name of which to-day is Hii Coluim Cille." And
Adamnan, writing amid the local traditions of lona Monastery
less than a century after the Founder's death, says that
Columba " sailed forth in the second year after the battle of
Cooldrevny, wishing to make a pilgrimage for Christ from
Scotia to Britain," where "he lived for thirty-four years an
island soldier." The beautiful description of the Saint which
he adds cannot be omitted — " Not a single day could he pass
without applying himself to prayer, reading, writing, or some
manual labour. By day and by night, without intermission,
he was engaged in such unwearied exercise of fasts and vigils
that the burden of any one of these labours in particular
might seem to be beyond human endurance. Meanwhile he
was dear to all, ever showing a cheerful, holy countenance,
and was gladdened to his inmost heart by the joy of the
Holy Ghost." Other indications lead us to think of Columba
at this turning point of his career as a tall and active man,
able to do and to endure, skilful to handle not only the pen
of the scribe, but the sail or oar ; a bard too, who could
compose a Gaelic song or Latin hymn and sing it to the
harp. His voice was splendid when uplifted in the psalmody
of the divine office, which he dearly loved.

Columba embarked from Derry with the customary
twelve companions from among his Irish monks. One of
them was his uncle, the priest Ernan, and two others his first
cousins, the brothers Baithen and Cobthach ; another was

ST. COLUMBA COMES TO ION A. 25

the Abbot's faithful attendant, Diormit. The rest were
Scandal (a distant cousin of the Saint), Rus and Fechno his
brother, Luguid Mocuthemne, Echoid, Mochonna, Cairnaan,
and Grillaan.

The vessel for the voyage was the usual Irish coracle of
oxhide stretched over wickerwork, propelled by sail and oars.
They turned their prow towards Scotland and on Whitsun
Eve, the I2th of May 563, they stepped out on to the shore of
the Bay of the Coracle at the south end of lona.

Tradition says that before he got to lona the Saint landed
on Oronsay, but on climbing the hill and catching sight of
the Irish coast on the horizon he pushed off again for further
north. Then from the Bay of the Coracle he again mounted
a height — that which lies to the west of the bay — and beheld
only the unbroken expanse of ocean. The separation de-
manded by his spirit of missionary renunciation was attained,
and thenceforward lona was his home. Dubh lartach light-
house stands as a tall monument where his searching eye
swept the horizon, and where he stood on the hilltop there
has been from time immemorial a conical heap of stones,
whose name, Cam Cul ri Eirinn or Cairn of the Back to
Ireland, reminds us of this historic farewell to a dearly loved
Fatherland. Some further considerations on the origin of the
title Cul ri Eirinn will be found at the end of Chapter XI.

According to the old Irish Life two bishops met Columba
when he landed in lona and demanded his submission to
them, but it was revealed to him that they were not really
bishops, and on his exposing them they left the island.* A
later writer improves on this by making them Druids dis-
guised as bishops. It is doubtful if the island was inhabited

* From this story, and an invocation of "the seven bishops of Hii" in a
litany attributed to Oengus the Culdee, and what the Bollandists consider an
impossible identification of St. Oran of lona with an earlier Oran in Ireland,
Dr. Skene (in Celtic Scotland) concludes that the Church was founded in lona
before Columba. Mr. C. Plummer, in his edition of Bede, Vol. II. p. 132, says
that the authorities for this "are too late to be of much value," and therewith
dismisses the idea.

26 THE STORY OF IONA.

at all at this particular period of unsettlement on the
Dalriadan frontier.

An old Irish annalist tells us that Conall, the reigning
Dalriadan king, made a donation of lona to the Saint. The
Venerable Bede's statement that it was King Brude of the
Picts who gave him the island probably means that the
powerful Brude, as over-lord, confirmed the grant of the
lesser king. Part of the motive of Columba's mission to
Scotland may have been the reconciling of the hostile and
victorious Picts with his countrymen the Dalriadan Scots,
who seem to have been in danger of extermination after
their late defeat.

On that first Saturday evening at the Bay of the Coracle,
the Abbot and his twelve would sing " the vesper praises of
God," as was ever their wont ; and next morning, Whit-
sunday, they would celebrate their Pentecostal Eucharist,
the necessaries for which would certainly be part of the
freight of the missionaries' boat. They doubtless soon
found their way to the eastern plain of the island, where
the square-towered mediaeval cathedral now forms so con-
spicuous a landmark. Built about the year 1200, it is
almost as near to us as to Columba, who was more than
600 years earlier. Few churches of his day remain in
existence in the world. One is the great Sancta Sophia,
which was then in its first magnificence, while its builder,
the Emperor Justinian, still sat on the imperial throne at
Constantinople. It is now a Mahommedan mosque, but there
was no such religion when Columba landed in lona : its
fanatical Prophet was born at Mecca six or seven years
later. To come nearer home, the Saxon tribes were still
invading and paganizing what was not yet known as
England, and driving the ancient British Church into the
west. Gregory the Great, who later set his priestly heart on
their conversion, was as yet an unknown young law-student
in Rome. St. Kentigern, first Bishop of Glasgow, was in
exile in Wales, but was soon to return to his see, and take

ST. COLUMBA COMES TO IONA. 2/

up St. Ninian's earlier work of building up the Church in
southern Scotland. The north remained for Columba.

The newly arrived monks proceeded to make themselves
at home in lona. For reasons which will be given at the
end of the book, it would seem that they built a quarter of
a mile north of the Cathedral, on the plain overlooking the
Sound. They probably had speedy accessions to their
number from Ireland, and were then able to complete their
monastery. The wood and wattle huts of the brothers must
have been well built to keep out the wind and driving rain,
but were doubtless rude and comfortless enough. The
Abbot's cell stood at the top of the slope, above the rest.
There were at least two larger buildings — the church and
refectory — built in the Irish way of the same materials as the
cells. Bede describes Bishop Finan of Lindisfarne, who was
a monk from lona, as " building a worthy cathedral, yet not
of stone, but entirely of sawn wood interwoven with rushes,
after the manner of the Scots." As will be shown later, it is
part of the supposition that the refectory was built over the
great table stone mentioned on page 8. The mill, barn,
and other farm buildings, and a line of earthen dykes en-
closing the whole on the landward side completed the work.
Adamnan incidentally mentions one of St. Columba's monks
going outside the vallum or wall of the monastery to kill an
ox. It can also be gathered from his pages that the first
buildings were of the perishable materials referred to above ;
hence, when they were burned by the Danes two centuries
after the Founder's death, they left no trace remaining.

From the supposed site of the Abbot's cell, near the house
Clachanach, the view of the broad stretch of water at the
head of lona Sound, and of the cliffs and mountains of Mull
beyond, is sometimes of surpassing beauty — above all, per-
haps, on a clear winter afternoon, when the expanse of sea is
blue and foam-flecked beneath the north wind, and the hills
surmounting the dark coast over the waters are white with
freshly fallen snow. Columba used to look on it all from his

28 THE STORY OF IONA.

doorway with interceding heart full of the needs of the wild
men beyond, to whom he was sent.

The monastery was a busy hive of men, engaged, between
their times of common prayer, in the most varied pursuits for
the welfare and objects of the brotherhood. Something has
already been said on the inward spirit of the Religious life,
but it remains to picture its outward form. The Celtic monk
shaved the front half of his head, letting the hair grow behind ;
this tonsure was the badge of his servitude to God. He wore
a cassock of undyed wool, with a hooded cowl over it. On
his admission he took " the monastic vow," as Adamnan calls
it, kneeling in the oratory. Thenceforward he was one of the
muinntir or family of which the abbot was the father and the
monastery the home.

The hours for divine service regulated the day. At mid-
night the bell summoned to Matins and Lauds in the church.*
The appointed psalms were chanted with collects between
them, and followed by Te Deum on Sundays in a shorter
form than ours, Psalms 148 to 150, and Gloria in excelsis.
These features of the night office are gathered from the
Bangor antiphoner, an old Irish service - book which was
written between the years 680 and 691. The other Irish
monasteries, including lona, probably used much the same
liturgical forms as Bangor. The antiphoner contains also the
canticles Benedictus and Benedicite, and other familiar forms.

The services were all in Latin. The monks read their
Bibles in Latin, and wrote their books and letters in it. They
were, in fact, bilingual in Gaelic and Latin.

The brethren returned to the church for short services at
about seven, twelve, and three o'clock, and in the evening.
Adamnan speaks of the celebration of Mass or the Eucharist
on the mornings of Sundays and festivals. The monks, robed
in white, sang the prayers, in one of which St. Martin and

* In Adamnan's description of St. Columba's death, he hastens into church at
the midnight bell, and his body is carried out after the "matins hymns," i.e.,
Lauds.

ST. COLUMBA COMES TO IONA. 29

other saints were named, including the saint of the day
according to the kalendar. St. Columba and his successor
Baithen, who died on the same day of June, had a joint
festival. This we learn from Adamnan, who refers also to
the feasts of Christmas and Easter and the fast of Lent.

Sometimes two priests officiated together as celebrants
at the altar. Once a certain bishop from Munster, named
Cronan, came like a simple priest to visit lona. On
Sunday, Columba invited him to celebrate with him, "that
as two priests they might break the bread of the Lord
together." But they no sooner reach the altar than the
Abbot, suddenly discerning the rank of his guest, looks in
his face, and exclaims, " Christ bless thee, brother ; break
thou this bread alone, according to the episcopal rite ; now
we know that thou art a bishop. Why hast thou hitherto
tried to disguise thyself, so that we gave thee not the venera-
tion that was thy due ? "

Our Communion hymn,

" Draw nigh, and take the Body of the Lord,
And drink the holy Blood for you outpoured,"

is translated from the " Hymn at the Communion of Priests,"
in the Bangor antiphoner, so perhaps at lona, too, they sang
its beautiful words while the priests of the monastery filed
up to the altar to receive the Blessed Sacrament from
St. Columba's hand.

At the end of the day, the brethren assembled from their
varied works for Evensong, at which Gloria in excelsis was
again sung. Its Celtic use at Matins and Evensong came
evidently from the Eastern Church, through Gaul. Adamnan
has two references to the evening service of the monks,
showing its performance at home and on a journey. Once
Columba and a mission party from lona sang, " after their
accustomed manner, the evening praises of God " outside the
gate of King Brude's castle at Inverness. And on the last
day of his life, Columba went to " evening Mass," by which

30 THE STORY OF IONA.

Adamnan means Vespers. This wider use of the word Mass
for other services as well as the Eucharist is found in other
early writers.

The baptism, both of infants and of converts from
heathenism, is mentioned by our authority, Adamnan ; and
also confession, with penance and absolution, the use of the
sign of the cross, and other beliefs and practices which were
general both in the Latin and Eastern Churches. The
monks of lona had also their little superstitions, like the
rest of the world. This was a minor matter compared with
the love for Christ and devotion of life exhibited by them.

The Celtic Church showed no doctrinal differences from
other Churches, but there was a peculiarity in the position
of their bishops and in the observance of Easter. In the
year 463, Rome and the Continental Churches adopted an
improved method of calculating Easter Day. It spread to
the south of Ireland ; but the more distant north and St.
Columba's Scottish mission, as well as the ancient British
Church, held to the old computation, so that sometimes
their Easter was on a different Sunday from the rest of
Christendom.

It resulted from the Gaelic clan system that the early
Irish bishops found themselves chief pastors of tribes of
people rather than of territorial dioceses ; and, in like
manner, the abbot of a leading monastery was the chief
pastor of the monastic clan, as it may be called, under his
jurisdiction. In some cases, such an abbot was himself a
bishop ; but even if he were only a priest, he had no bishop
over him. In fact, presbyter-abbots like those of lona had
bishops under them, for they had monks made bishops in
their monasteries, to ordain deacons and priests as required.
These monk-bishops continued to live the same life as the
other monks, though honour was shown to their sacred office.
Somewhat similar is the position of a present-day bishop
who resigns his see, and is appointed, let us say, to a canonry
in a cathedral, where he takes his place and fulfils his

ST. COLUMBA COMES TO IONA. 31

duties among the other canons, under the presidency of
the dean.

Thus it came to pass that the organization of the early
Scottish Church was monastic, not diocesan ; there were
many bishops, but few bishoprics. After a time the power of
lona and its abbots began to decline and bishoprics to spring
up, but it was not until the twelfth century that either
Scotland or Ireland was at all fully organized into dioceses.

Returning to the daily life of the monks of lona we note
that, besides worship and intercession, which were primary
objects in the home life of the community, much time and
labour were devoted to farming and other manual work, in
which the priests joined with the rest. They grew corn on
the western plain of the island, and had also a farm in Tiree
to supply their growing numbers. They kept cattle and
sheep and used the milk of the former, but do not seem
ordinarily to have eaten flesh-meat. The monks had also a
seal farm, probably on the little island of Soa, a mile and a
half south of lona.* The seals were undoubtedly valued for
the table as well as for their oil. To the present day their
flesh is not despised in the Western Isles, and it passed as
fish when Lent was observed, but the oil is the chief profit
from a seal.

Wednesday and Friday were fast-days in the monastery,
as they were generally in the Church. The Abbot sometimes
dispensed from the strictness of the fast out of hospitality to
guests.

A horse carried the pails of milk from the byre, and there
was a cart in which Columba, when old and feeble, was
sometimes taken to visit the brothers at their work in the
fields. Besides the work of the house and farm there were
such necessary things as fishing, boat-building, carpentry,

* Adamnan tells how Ere came up from Colonsay in his boat and hid on the
shore of Mull, " that by night he might sail over to the little island where the
sea-calves, ours by right, are bred and breed," in order to kill enough to fill his
boat. A boat crossing from Mull to Soa would be in full view down the Sound
by daylight. Soa is still frequented by seals.

32 THE STORY OF IONA.

and metal work to be done. The hides of the cattle were
used to cover coracles and the sheepskins to make writing
parchment. Copying books was a very special work of
monks, and at lona, Columba and Baithen were both ardent
scribes in their spare moments. Some old Irish manuscripts
are ornamented in the most elaborate style of Celtic art.
The Kells gospel book, now at Dublin, is one of the art
marvels of the world for its decorative drawing and colour.
Throughout the Middle Ages it was believed to be Columba's
handiwork, but is now, through comparison with the Lindis-
farne gospels and some other manuscripts, assigned to the
eighth century, though quite likely to have been executed in
lona. Connachtach, an Abbot of lona who died in 802, is
called in the Irish annals "a scribe most choice," which
implies an illuminator of such manuscripts.

Books were not only written but were studied and taught
in monasteries. lona was probably too remote and too
much occupied in missions to be a great school for students
from elsewhere, but it was a place of learning nevertheless,
and produced scholars and authors such as Adamnan. The
Holy Bible was the favourite subject of study, and Adamnan
was acquainted with both the sacred languages in which it
is written, Hebrew and Greek.

Monastic communities did their best to provide for all
their needs themselves, and this must have been specially
necessary in an island like lona. But there was constant
communication with Ireland and at least occasionally with
the Continent, for we read how once St. Columba and Lugne
fell in at Kintyre with a ship from Gaul, whose sailors told
the two monks about a great volcanic eruption in Italy, of
which the Abbot had already had a vision.

Under its new owners, lona became a centre of charity,
beneficence, and civilization. Men came there " seeking
matters concerning medicines for the body" — Adamnan's
description of one visitor — and still more came seeking
medicines for the soul. Columba's treatment of a visitor

ST. COLUMBA COMES TO IONA. 33

of another kind is instructive. Ere MacDruid, a robber,
sails across from Colonsay one day with designs on the
young seals belonging to the monastery (see p. 31 and
footnote). He is detected hiding under his boat on the
shore of Mull, and brought before the Abbot. " Why dost
thou transgress the divine command and often steal the
goods of others ? When thou art in want, come to us,
and thou shalt receive the necessaries thou dost ask for."
The Saint then orders some sheep to be killed and given
to him instead of the seals, and later, near the end of
Erc's life, another present is sent to him, a fat sheep and
six pecks of corn from the monastery farm in Tiree.

There is nothing to show that Columba or his Celtic
successors established any monastery of women in lona.
They would be familiar with these institutions in Ireland,
but seem not to have imported them into the Scottish
mission field, where life was rough and hazardous. Eilean
nam Ban, the Women's Island, on the Mull side of lona
Sound, was probably the residence of the wives and families
of men employed by the monks as sailors, farm labourers,
etc. The monks did not look at all disparagingly on
married life, and were not "women-haters" in consequence
of their own celibacy. On the contrary, they taught and
helped all people alike to live as they ought. When a
discontented wife wished " to cross the seas and remain
in some monastery of maidens," Columba told her that
it could not be rightly done, "for thou art bound by the
law of a husband so long as the husband liveth. For it
would be a sin for those whom God hath lawfully joined
together to be put asunder." Then he bids both husband
and wife to join with him in prayer and fasting that day,
and restores love between them.

CHAPTER IV.

THE ABBOT AND MISSIONARY.

WE shall only half know the monks of lona until we
have followed them into their mission field ; but before
doing this the personal life of their Founder claims some
further reverent notice. Columba governed his children
with fatherly love, which can be measured by their devoted
affection for him. Much evidence of this is afforded in
Adamnan's pages, though it is also apparent that there
was both a stern and a fiery side to his character. The
deference due from the Religious to their Abbot was ex-
pressed outwardly by their addressing him on bended knee,
but he was the most diligent and led the hardest life of
them all. He was resolute in subduing the flesh to the
spirit, and we know from Adamnan that he slept on a
bare flagstone, with another stone for pillow, to his dying
day. The Irish Life says that he was accustomed, after
his short night's sleep, to recite " the three fifties " — i.e., the
Psalter, until morning on the sand of the seashore, and
that when he lay on the sand he left the print of his
ribs on it, through his habit. " This was his nightwork.
In the day following, however, he would frequent the
canonical hours and would offer the Body of Christ and
His Blood ; would preach the Gospel, would baptize, bless,
and anoint." And again — "Great was the humility of
Columkill, for it was he himself that used to take their
shoes off his monks, and that used to wash their feet for
them. 'Tis he that used often to take his share of corn
on his back to the mill, and that used to grind it and
bring it home with him."

X

THE ABBOT AND MISSIONARY. 35

The Angels' Hill in lona is associated with the memory
of St. Columba in a very special degree. He was seen one day
by a prying monk, says his biographer Adamnan, standing
on a certain mound on the western plain absorbed in prayer,
with outspread hands and eyes raised heavenward, when
angels in white, flying to him with wonderful speed, stood
round him for a time and then sped back to heaven.
" Whence even to this day the place of that angelic con-
ference attests the event which took place upon it by its
proper name, which in Latin may be rendered Colliculus
Angelorum, but in Scotic, Cnoc Angel." Adamnan goes on
to tell how the Saint used often to watch in prayer in secret
places of the island during the long winter nights, when every
one else was asleep.

The Angels' Hill stands in the midst of the fields where
the monks used to labour at the harvest, and overlooks
the plain of the Machair and the broad curve of the
Camus or western bay of the island. To this shore the
Saint one day dispatched a brother to succour a crane from
his beloved Ireland, which had dropped exhausted on the
beach, and to tend it for three days till it could fly off again
to the dear homeland.

Prophecies, miracles, and visions are narrated of the
Saint by his biographer. The prophecies are often what
Highlanders call second sight, similar to the telepathy
and kindred phenomena of modern psychology. Thus one
very cold winter day in lona, Columba suddenly began to
weep, and told his attendant Diormit that the brethren at
Durrow were being made to labour at building, regardless of
the inclement weather. At that very moment he heard in
spirit Laisren, their superior, tell them to stop work and
command food to be prepared for their refreshment, and that
they should not only rest on that day, but whenever the
weather was severe. Whereupon he told the lona brethren
about it and blessed Laisren, rejoicing greatly.

Christians know that prayer works miracles ; in other

36 THE STORY OF IONA.

words, God's providence governs the universe, and God
listens to prayer, and especially the prayers of saints. " The
effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much."
Columba was once overtaken by a sudden storm at sea, and
the boat was on the point of being overwhelmed by the
waves, which were dashing over the side. As he laboured with
the others to bail out the flood of water, they cried to him
rather to pray for them ere they perished. Then as he stood
in the bow beseeching the Almighty with hands outstretched
to heaven, the wind dropped and the sea grew calm, and his
amazed companions thanked and glorified the Lord with
great wonder. At another time Diormit was sick nigh unto
death, and the Abbot came to visit him in his last extremity.
Standing over his bed he invoked the name of Christ, and
prayed that so long as he lived the faithful brother might
not be taken away. He forthwith recovered, and lived
not only to minister to the dying Abbot, but many years
longer.

Some of the miracles told by Adamnan are not necessarily
supernatural, as when Columba triumphantly sails off down
Loch Ness in the teeth of an adverse wind, which Broichan
the Druid has called up against him. Others are stories
which have been unconsciously improved in oft telling until
they have become truly astonishing. But miracles of prayer
like those mentioned above are sufficiently explained in the
Gospels.

The Saint's converse with celestial spirits on the Angels'
Hill is one of the visions to which Adamnan devotes the
third book of his Life. In order to tell another vision he
brings us to the holy deathbed of the first monk who died
in lona. The monk is not named, but is called a Briton, and
a man intent on good deeds. The Abbot visited him, stood
by his bed a little while, then blessed him and hastened out,
unable to endure the grief of seeing him die. His spirit
passed away while the Abbot was walking in the courtyard,
where, with face upraised to heaven, he watched the angels

THE ABBOT AND MISSIONARY. 37

warring with hostile powers as they bore the pilgrim's soul
to bliss.

Tradition makes the first monk who died in the island to
have been St. Oran, thus accounting for the name of the
ancient Reilig Odhrain, Oran's Burial-ground, where his
body was the first committed to the earth, and where the
islanders still lay their dead, to mingle with the dust of
ancient saints and kings. An outrageous tale in the old
Irish Life of St. Columba implies that Oran was buried alive,
a willing victim, by Columba and the rest of his party on
their first arrival in lona, in order to take possession of the
soil. It seems to be based on the simple fact of his being
the first burial, which is the most rational account of him.
In that case, he was the holy monk whom Adamnan calls
a Briton above. Oran was an Irishman, a kinsman of .
Columba ; but so was the fourth Abbot of lona, who, never- /
theless, is called Fergna Brit, i.e., the Briton. According to
the genealogists, Oran and Fergna belonged to the same
family, which perhaps had lived or intermarried among the
Britons. Or they may have come to lona from the British
monastery of Whithorn, which was frequented by Irish
students.

St. Oran's name occurs in the Irish kalendar written about
800 A.D. by Oengus (or Angus) the Culdee, and a note —
probably almost as old as the text — adds to his name,
" from Relicc Odran in I-Choluim-chille," thus showing the
antiquity of the name by which the cemetery is still called.
There used to be a well near it also bearing his name, and
a hill in the middle of the island is named after him.
Although there is doubt about the supposition that Colonsay
and Oronsay are named from Columba and Oran, there are
Gaelic place-names commemorative of Oran in Colonsay,
Mull, Tiree, and other islands, suggesting that he was a
leading missionary and church founder under Columba in
the Isles, and famous in his day and afterwards. He is
described in the Irish kalendar as a priest.

38 THE STORY OF IONA.

The newly founded community grew apace, and even
numbered Saxon converts among its members. The Irish
Life of the Founder breaks into verse to tell us —

" Illustrious the soldiers that were in Hi,
Thrice fifty in monastic rule,
With their curachs, across the sea,
And for rowing, threescore men."

The monasteiy began to throw out offshoots, one of the
earliest of which was founded in Adamnan's oft-mentioned
Hinba Island, supposed to be Elachnave. The island has a
precipitous coast, with a break in the cliff giving access to
the interior, where the buildings mentioned on page 16 are
found. The brothers in Hinba were not missionaries, but
lived the secluded life of anchorites, and had charge of
penitents, who were sent thither to prepare for absolution.
St. Columba often visited Hinba, and once shut himself up
in a cell there for three days and nights, neither eating nor
drinking, absorbed in heavenly contemplation, and some-
times breaking out into spiritual songs.

At another time Columba's three old friends, Brendan,
Kenneth and Comgall, with Cormac the Abbot of Durrow,
came from Ireland to see him, and found him in Hinba.
At their joint request, says Adamnan, " he consecrated
the sacred mysteries of the Eucharist in their presence,"
and Brendan afterwards told his companions that he had
seen a bright globe of fire shining above Columba's head
as he stood before the altar consecrating the holy oblation.

Columba appointed his uncle, the priest Ernan, to be
superior at Hinba, near the end of the old man's life.
He had been but a short time at his post there when he
felt that his end was near, and returned to lona. As he
walked feebly but joyfully up from the landing place, the
Abbot came to meet him, but as they drew near one
another Ernan fell dead. Two crosses were set up, one
where he died, in front of the kiln for drying corn, and
another where Columba stood at the moment. This

THE ABBOT AND MISSIONARY. 39

account seems to indicate that the monastery was north
of the mill - stream and kiln, two landmarks that have
been identified.

The first two years in lona were doubtless a time of
settling down, building, and preparation, and then in 565
St. Columba entered on the great work of his life, the
evangelizing of the Northern Picts. On his first journey
to them he had as companions St. Kenneth and St. Comgall,
as we learn from their respective Lives. The expedition
may have been a sequel to their visit to Hinba which
has just been mentioned. If so, Columba occupied Hinba
and received them there very soon after his arrival in
Scotland, and this is otherwise probable. Kenneth and
Comgall were Irish Picts by race, and would be just the
men to help Columba to get into touch with the Picts
of Scotland, whose language and customs were strange to
him. He showed his practical wisdom in obtaining such
helpers, and also in going straight to the King of the
Picts as the first step towards converting the nation.

The party made their way from lona to the mainland,
where they could then follow the Great Glen of Alba,
which cleaves mountainous northern Scotland through from
sea to sea, from Oban north-eastward to Inverness. The
glen is a great water-way of elongated lochs, overhung
by wild hills, and now connected by the Caledonian Canal,
where then the missionaries would have to carry their light
coracles overland from loch to loch. Finally, the winding
stream of the Ness would float them swiftly down to King
Brude's hill-fort, overlooking the present town of Inverness.
The King shut his castle gates against them, but they flew
open at the sign of the cross, and Columba, firmly over-
coming the opposition of the King and his Druids, gained
a hearing for his sacred message. The result was the
conversion of the King, and though Broichan, his chief
Druid and foster-father, continues to appear as an adver-
sary, Brude became a steadfast friend of the Saint. His

4O THE STORY OF IONA.

kingdom was gradually evangelized from lona, but it com-
prised the whole of northern Scotland, and years of
persevering labour must be indicated by the words of
Bede : " Columba came to Britain when Brude the son of
Maelcon, a most mighty king, reigned over the Picts, in
the ninth year of his reign, and by word and example
converted that people to the faith of Christ."

The same writer, St Bede, describes the lona mission-
aries in the north of England sixty or seventy years later,
in a way that enables us to picture Columba and his
brethren among the Picts as they gradually became
Christian. " Many from the region of the Scots came
daily into Britain and the English provinces ruled by
Oswald, and with great devotion preached the word of
faith, and those among them who had received priests'
orders ministered to the believers the grace of baptism.
. . . The religious habit was at that time in great venera-
tion, so that wheresoever any cleric or monk happened
to come, he was joyfully received by all persons as God's
servant ; and if they chanced to meet him as he was
upon the way, they ran to him and bowing were glad
to be signed with his hand or blessed with his mouth.
Great attention, moreover, was paid to their exhortations,
and on Sundays the people flocked eagerly to the church
or the monasteries, not to feed their bodies, but to hear
the word of God. And if any priest happened to come
into the village, the inhabitants forthwith flocked together
to bear from him the word of life. For the priests and
clerics went into the villages on no other account than
to preach, baptize, visit the sick, and (in few words) to
take care of souls."

St. Comgall took advantage of the same visit to Scotland
in 565 to establish a monastery in Tiree, where he remained
for some time. The Isles were still dangerous, for Pictish
pirates made a descent on the settlement one day when
Comgall was at work in the fields. The Saint prayed

THE ABBOT AND MISSIONARY. 4!

for the deliverance of his community, and they escaped
being carried off by the marauders, but he seems to
have given up the attempt to settle in Tiree. The lona
community, however, extended itself thither, and with more
permanence than their forerunners. Columba's chief founda-
tion in the island was Magh Lunge Monastery, probably at
Soroby, on the broad bay of Hynish, facing lona. The south
end of Tiree, where it rises into the heights of Ben Hynish
and Kenevara, is the most prominent part as seen from lona.
Other hills appear to the north, the low-lying land between
being invisible.

At Magh Lunge, Baithen presided over a house to which
penitents were sent, and a farm whose produce supplemented
the smaller resources of lona itself. There was, of course,
much sailing to and fro between the two islands. Once a
huge whale rose threateningly before a boat-load of monks,
who hauled down their sail in a terrible fright, and, taking
to the oars, pulled back to lona, barely escaping an upset
from the commotion of the water. Then Baithen, who
happened to be going back to Tiree, went out, and from
his boat's prow blessed the monster, and it sank into the
depth and was seen no more.

Magh Lunge means the Plain of the Ship in old Gaelic,
and there is a well of the same name near the north end of
lona.

Columba had other monasteries also in Tiree, but we
know the name of only one of them, Artchain, meaning High
Hill. It has not been identified. Findchan, the first
superior, was severely rebuked by Columba for having an
unfit person ordained priest by a bishop in his monastery.
He lost his right hand by disease, for having used it to join
with the bishop in this wrongful laying-on of hands, and he
appears in the Irish kalendar of saints as " Findchan of long-
continued suffering." Kilfinichan (Church of Findchan) is
the title of a parish in the Ross of Mull, next to lona.

CHAPTER V.

ST. COLUMBA'S LABOURS AND REST.

IONA and Tiree were within the territory claimed by the
Dalriadan Scots, whose sixth king, Conall, is said to have
granted both islands to St. Columba on his arrival. Columba
must have greatly benefited the Scots by his bold and
successful mission to their foes the Picts, whereby the two
peoples became one in the faith, with sacred lona as a bond
between them, and the way was thus prepared for their
political union. The community were pastors to the Scots
as well as missionaries to the Picts, and had branch houses
in both kingdoms. One in Dalriada was a " cell " or small
monastery on the banks of Loch Awe amid the Argyllshire
mountains, perhaps where the remains of an ancient church,
dedicated to St. Columkill, stand near the southern end of
the loch. Adamnan tells how Columba foresaw that Cailtan,
the superior there, was near the end of his life, and recalled
him to die in lona.

Kingarth Monastery, which seems to have been under
lona's jurisdiction, was in the green island of Bute, in the
Firth of Clyde. St. Blane, the traditional founder, is said to
have been a disciple of St. Kenneth and St. Comgall. In the
seventh century two bishops (probably abbot-bishops) of
Kingarth appear in the Irish annals, and St. Ronan and two
other abbots in the eighth century, when they seem no longer
to have held the episcopal office. St. Ronan's name is
attached to a chapel and bay in lona.

There were some bad characters among the Scots in the
Isles. Ere of Colonsay tried to steal the young seals belong-

ST. COLUMBA'S LABOURS AND REST. 43

ing to the monastery, and the sons of Conall, son of Domhnall,
of the Dalriadan royal family, were " persecutors of churches"
and no better than pirates. One of them, named loan, thrice
attacked and plundered the home of a poor farmer with
whom St. Columba used sometimes to lodge when on his
journeys. When loan was carrying off his booty the third
time, he met the Saint face to face on the shore of a bay in
Ardnamurchan. Columba earnestly entreated the marauders
to restore the goods, even following their ship up to his
knees in the sea, witk hands uplifted in prayer to Christ, as
they pushed off, mocking and laughing at him. Retribution,
however, overtook them, for a sudden storm overwhelmed
their vessel between Mull and Colonsay and all were
drowned.

At another time loan's brothers, whom Columba had
excommunicated for their wickedness, attacked him in Hinba,
and one miscreant rushed upon him with levelled spear.
The monk Finlagan threw himself in front of his Abbot,
whose cowl he was wearing, and the weapon was turned by
the Saint's garment. This devoted man is commemorated
in the name of Loch Finlagan, in Isla, which contains St.
Finlagan's Isle, with a ruined chapel dedicated to him.

Conall, son of Comgall, King of the Scots, died in 574,
and Columba chose his successor, so great was the power
which his character and connexions gave him in Dalriadan
affairs. Adamnan tells of the angelical visitations to the
Saint while staying in Hinba, which made him summon
Conall's cousin Aidan, the son of Gabhran, to lona, and
" ordain " him king by laying on of hands with prayer and
benediction. This is the earliest record of a royal hallowing
in Britain. Aidan proved a great king in his way, and made
his power felt against his Pictish, British, and Saxon neigh-
bours. He was the ancestor of the early kings of Scotland,
more than twenty of whom lie buried in lona's ancient
cemetery ; an ancestor, too, through the Stewarts, of our
King Edward VII.

44 THE STORY OF IONA.

In the year after Aidan's succession, he and St. Columba
went to Ireland to attend a great national convention of
chiefs and churchmen, which encamped for no less than
fourteen months at Drumceitt, near Derry. Columba's great
influence in this Parliament obtained Home Rule for Aidan's
kingdom of British Dalriada. He exerted himself also to
raise the position of women in Ireland, and got a decree
passed exempting them from the barbarous duty of fighting
in battle, though Adamnan had to do this over again in the
following century. At Drumceitt, Columba also intervened
to save the whole order of bards from expulsion from
Ireland on account of their annoying exactions of hospit-
ality for themselves and their attendants. They were put
under restrictive rules instead of being suppressed ; and,
in gratitude for the escape, the chief bard, blind Dalian
Forgaill, began a eulogy of their protector, which he com-
pleted as a lament when the Saint died. It is known as the
Amhra (or Praises) of Columkill, and its remains are in the
Irish Liber Hymnorum in a somewhat altered form, thought
to date from the early ninth century.

This was far from being Columba's only visit to Ireland,
but lona remained his home ; and the building up of a great
religious centre there and the apostolic work of preaching
Christ in the Highlands and Isles absorbed his energies
more and more. The Pictish work may be briefly noticed
under the following heads : —

THE ISLE OF SKYE. — Once Columba, absorbed in prayer
in a dense wood in Skye (which now has no woods), was
confronted by a fierce wild boar, pursued by hunting dogs.
The terrible beast falls dead at his prayer. At another time
he meets, in the same island, an aged Pictish military officer,
named Artbranan, who had " kept his natural goodness all
his life long." The Saint instructs him, through an inter-
preter, and baptizes him, just in time to anticipate his death.
There are remains of a monastery bearing St. Columba's
name, in Loch Columcille, in Skye.

46 THE STORY OF IONA.

THE ISLE OF EIGG — a basalt island between Skye and
Ardnamurchan Point — was occupied by an independent
mission of Irish monks, under St. Donnan, in Columba's
later years. Donnan, asked Columba to be their souFs-
friend, or confessor ; and the lona Abbot thereupon pre-
dicted that they would come to red martyrdom, which so
fell out after his death. Adamnan speaks of Baithen being
once detained at Eigg by contrary winds when Columba
wanted him at Hinba.

Adamnan often refers to expeditions of Columba across
the " Backbone of Britain/' t.e., Drum-Alban, or the Grampian
range, which divided Dalriada from the Picts. In Glen
Urquhart, among the wild hills that look down on the
voyager on Loch Ness, he baptizes another good old heathen
man like the one in Skye, Emchath by name, whose son,
Virolec, also believes and is baptized, with all his house.

King Brude's fort, near the present town of Inverness, has
been already mentioned. Here the lona missionaries, led first
by Columba himself, reached quite the other side of Scotland.
Of the two historic hills near Inverness, Reeves favours Craig-
phatrick, but Skene the ridge of Torvean, as the site of
Brude's castle. Both have ancient fortifications on them.
Torvean may possibly be named after St. Baithen.

DEER, where Aberdeenshire juts out into the North Sea
east of Inverness, makes a further point to which Columba
penetrated. He came first to Aberdour, where the local chief
gave the monks a site for a mission, and then he asked the
chief for the Pictish fort at Deer, in which he also installed
missionaries, with St. Drostan for Abbot. The legend of the
name Deer is that the tears (Gaelic deara} of the young
superior flowed at the parting with his spiritual father. All
this is derived from an entry in the Book of Deer, a service-
book which was written in this monastery about the year
900 and is still preserved in part. Drostan's very Pictish
name suggests that Columba wisely chose him for his post,
as being a native of the country.

ST. COLUMBA'S LABOURS AND REST. 47

ABERDEEN. — The church seems to have been founded by
a band of missionaries sent out into Pictland by Columba
late in his life. Their leader was the St. Machar of the
Aberdeen breviary, which says he had previously been sent
" to the island called Mull, to preach God's faith." The story
of Machar is dim legend rather than history, and mayor may
not be true. He seems to have been the Mochonna who
came to lona with the Founder.

THE ORKNEY ISLES, at the very extremity of northern
Scotland, were visited by St. Cormac. Columba, on quitting
Ireland, had apparently left Cormac as Abbot of Durrow, but
he devoted much of his energy to sailing about in adventurous
search of " a desert in the ocean " in which to live, and some-
times touched at lona on these voyages. He does not seem
to have found his " desert," but he must have been a good
explorer and pioneer for missionaries of more settled habits
to follow. The Orkney Picts to whom he went seem to have
been dangerous. Their chief and Columba happened to
meet at King Brude's fort just before Cormac's voyage, and
Columba asked the King to make the chief understand that
no harm must befall the monks when they reached his
country. They were thus " delivered from impending death
while in the Orkneys," says Adamnan, and returned safe to
Ireland, calling at lona on the way.

Thus by land and sea the Columban monks traversed and
coasted northern Scotland, from Argyllshire on the west
round to the Tay or the Forth on the east, sometimes settling,
sometimes only visiting at first, but sure to come again.
They have left their visible traces especially in the Isles and
on the seaboard, where the remains of little Celtic chapels
and monastic cells and the lingering of Columkill's name
show where they prayed and taught. Much of the ground
was occupied in Columba's own strenuous days, when the
mission had a powerful friend in King Brude mac Mailchon
till his death in 584, and continued to be supported by the
power of his successor Gartnaidh, who lived among the

48 THE STORY OF IONA.

•

Southern Picts on the Tay. This circumstance seems to
have brought both Columba and his old companion the Irish
St. Kenneth to that part of the country. The Southern Picts
had long ago been evangelized by St. Ninian, but apparently
without much permanent effect, and the old Irish records *
say that Columba " used to teach the tribes that were about
Tay, a river in Alba," and that "he subdued to benediction
the mouths of the fierce ones who dwelt with Tay's high king."
Kenneth built a monastery at Kilrymont, a place which
became afterwards, under the name of St. Andrews, the seat
of the Scottish primacy.

Besides the Dalriadan and Pictish sovereigns, Columba
had another royal friend in Rydderch, the ruler of the
British kingdom of Strathclyde. " King Roderc, who
reigned on the rock of Clyde," Adamnan calls him, for
his stronghold was built on the great rock overhanging
the river below Glasgow, and still called Dun-Breatuinn
(Fort of the Britons) by the Gaelic people to the north,
and in English, Dumbarton. The long-standing belief that
this was St. Patrick's birthplace is not shared by his recent
biographer, Professor Bury. But it certainly was the capital
of Rydderch, who, " as he was a friend of the holy man,
sent some secret message to him by Lugbe Mocumin,
seeking to know whether he was to be slain by his enemies
or not." Adamnan says the reply was an assurance that
the King would die on a feather pillow. He was a Christian
prince, who had been baptized in Ireland, and had gained
his throne in 573 by a victory over the heathen party in
Strathclyde. These enemies of religion had driven the
holy bishop Kentigern, or Mungo, into Wales ; but King
Rydderch recalled the prelate, and restored him to his
bishopric at Glasgow, where the old cathedral bears his
name and the city arms display his varied emblems. The

* The Amhra with its glosses, in frisk Liber Hymnorum (II. Bradshaw Soc.)
For Kenneth, see The Martyrology of Otngm, published by the same Society,
p. 223.

ST. COLUMBA'S LABOURS AND REST. 49

much earlier labours of St. Ninian for the conversion of
southern Scotland were earnestly revived by Kentigern
while Columba was evangelizing the heathen north.

It is pleasing to read, in the Life of St. Kentigern, of a
wsit paid to him by his great fellow-worker from lona. It
took place, probably, towards the close of Columba's life,
ivhen the accession of King Gartnaidh, the Southern Pict,
lad given a more southerly turn to his interests. The
lay mission would bring him near Strathclyde ; and he
ivould learn then, if not before, of the British bishop's
devoted pastoral labours and strict and lowly monastic
ife. Columba, then, sailed southward from his island and
ap the broad Clyde, past his friend King Rydderch's rock
"ortress, to Glasgow. Kentigern and his clergy came out
:o meet him with chant of psalms and hymns; and, while
:he lona monks responded in joyful chorus, the two good
Did men greeted one another with a brotherly embrace.
Their respective mission fields would give them much to
:onfer about ; and when the time for parting came, the
Bishop and the Abbot exchanged pastoral staves in token
)f mutual love in Christ, and then the lona curachs sailed
iway again for the north.

Adamnan tells a pretty story which belongs to the end of
Columba's life. One day when he was with King Aidan he
isked the King who was going to succeed him. Aidan
•eplied that he did not yet know which of his three elder
sons it would be, whereupon the old Abbot declared that it
would be none of them, but whichever of the younger children
should rush into his lap when brought before him. So the
boys are called in, and yellow-haired little Echoid runs to the
Abbot and throws himself into his arms. Then the Saint
kissed and blessed him and said to his father, " This is the
successor and is to reign as king after thee, and his sons will
reign after him." Not very long after, the Scots took the
field against the Miathi, a British tribe, and one day St.
Columba, in lona, suddenly cried to Diormit, "Ring the

D

IS

:

DTf>

5O THE STORY OF IONA.

bell." He then ran to the church, followed by all the monks,
and as they knelt he said, "Let us now beseech the Lord
earnestly for this nation and King Aidan, for at this moment
they are going into battle." After praying for a while, he
went out of the church and gave thanks that a victory had
been gained, though a sad one. It turned out that two of the
King's elder sons and three hundred of the people had fallen.
The death of a third son in battle with the Saxons left the
young Echoid heir to the throne, to which he succeeded on
his father's death in 606. The battle with the Miathi is
identified as the battle of Circinn in 596, the year befor
Columba died.

One day in May of 597, Columba, now feeble with age,
was carried in a waggon to visit the brethren at work on the
western plain of the island. As they talked he told ther
how, in April, he had greatly longed to pass away to Christ
but chose, by God's permission, to remain a little longer, thz
their Eastertide joy might not be turned to sorrow. Ther
they knew that the mournful parting was near. His last day
on earth was a Saturday in early June. He took his attendar
Diormit with him to the granary, blessed the corn laid uj
there, and as he returned sat down to rest by the wayside
Here the white horse, that faithful servant (as Adamnan call
him) that used to carry the milk pails, came up and pushed its
head into the Abbot's breast, seeming to weep for him. He
blessed the dumb creature, when it sadly left him, " and then
going on and ascending the knoll that overlooks the mon-
astery, he stood for a little while on its top, and there standing
and lifting up both hands he blessed his monastery, saying,
' To this place, small and mean though it be, not only the
kings of the Scots with their peoples, but also rulers of
strange and foreign nations and their subjects, shall bring
great honour in no common measure, and by the saints of
other churches shall no slight reverence be shown.' "

Returning to his cell, he sat "transcribing the Psalter,
until he came to that verse of the thirty-third psalm where it

ST. COLUMBA'S LABOURS AND REST. 51

is written ' They who seek the Lord shall want no manner of
thing that is good.' Here I must stop, he says, at the foot
of this page, and what follows let Baithen write." Adamnan
here remarks that this last verse which Columba penned was
very applicable to the dying Saint, to whom the good things
of eternity shall never be lacking, and the verse which follows
was indeed very suitable to the Father who succeeded him,
and was the teacher of his spiritual sons, namely, " Come, ye
children, and hearken unto me : I will teach you the fear of
the Lord."

After attending Vespers, Columba reclined on his bed of
stone and gave Diormit some last injunctions for the com-
munity, exhorting them to brotherly love and promising
them God's help and his own intercession. " After which, as
the happy last hour gradually approached, the Saint was
silent." At midnight the bell rang for Nocturns, and by a
last effort he hastened into church and sank down before the
altar. " Meanwhile, the community of monks, running up
with lights, began to weep at the sight of their dying Father.
And as we have learned (says Adamnan) from some who
were there present, the Saint, his soul not yet departing, with
open eyes upturned, looked round about on either side
with wonderful cheerfulness and joy of countenance as he
saw the holy angels coming to meet him. Diormit then lifts
up the holy right hand of the Saint that he may bless the
choir of monks." After a feeble movement of benediction
with the hand he breathed forth his spirit. It was after
midnight, Sunday the pth day of June.

The weeping brethren, after the first outburst of grief,
mastered themselves to chant the usual night service, the
Saint lying in their midst with his face still ruddy and won-
derfully gladdened as by an angelic vision. " When the matins
hymns were ended, the sacred body was carried back from
the church, with chant of psalms by the brethren, to the cell
whence a little before he had come alive." For three days
and nights they celebrated his obsequies alone, for the rolling

52 THE STORY OF IONA.

waves of the Sound under a great gale of wind forbade all
access to the island. His body was then committed to the
earth, presumably in Reilig Odhrain, and Adamnan says
they set up his stone pillow as a monument at the grave. A
century or two after these days of primitive simplicity, the
bones were dug up and put in a portable shrine, to be kept
in the church. Veneration thenceforth fixed itself on the
shrine, and forgot where the grave had been. Suffice it that
lona is Columba's grave, and his dust is mingled with hers.

Twenty-two years before, as we have seen, Columba's
intervention at Drumceitt saved the bards of Ireland from
expulsion from their country, and now old blind Dalian
Forgaill, in his Amhra, sings the praises of their benefactor
in glowing terms like these : — " He who preserves us alive has
died, our messenger to our Lord. Now have we no sage, no
teacher to explain word-truth. He could number the stars
of heaven who could tell of every noble thing which we from
Columkill have heard. He was sparing in food, he checked
the body's desires, a perfect sage he believed Christ, he was
chaste, he was gentle, a protection to the naked, a shelter to
the poor — there came none into the world more constant in
remembrance of the Cross."

a

:

CHAPTER VI.

THE CENTURY AFTER COLUMBA.

IT will be convenient now to base the story of lona on a
list of its abbots, from the Founder's death until the record
of the names of his successors begins to fail us three
centuries later. Thenceforward historical notices of the
island become irregular.

1. St. Columba died in 597.

2. Baithen (597-600). By the dying Saint's own appoint-
ment he was succeeded by his cousin, St. Baithen, and the
community long continued to choose its abbots from the
Founder's kin, of the race of Conall Gulban, son of Niall.
This was in accordance with the Irish custom of the times
and the clan feeling of the Celts.

Baithen was Columba's foster son as well as his cousin,
and had been a monk of his first monastery at Derry, whence
he accompanied him to lona. During Columba's life we
find Baithen superintending the farming in lona, and in
charge of the branch monastery and farm at Magh Lunge in
Tiree. He also appears as writing psalters at lona, voyaging
about the Isles, and acting as the Abbot's coadjutor. An

Irish authority says of his habit of constant prayer that
when he ate he was wont to say, "O God, make speed to save
me," between every two mouthfuls, and that when gathering
corn with the monks he kept his right hand raised in sup-
plication. As Abbot, he is called by Adamnan a holy
and wise man, affable, and popular with strangers.

After only three years in office, Baithen fell in a deathly
faint when praying near the altar four days before St.
Columba's Feast. Amid the lamentations of the brethren,

54 THE STORY OF IONA.

who thought him dying on the spot, Diormit exclaimed
how short a time would separate the anniversaries of the
two abbots. At the words Baithen opened his eyes and
breathed a prayer that he might live for the interval. It
was granted, he departed on the Founder's feast day, and a
joint festival of both the Saints was thenceforth kept at lona.

3. Laisren (600-605) had been previously superior at
Durrow, as appears from the vision of St. Columba told on

P- 35-

4. Fergna (605-623) is sometimes surnamed Brit — i.e., the
Briton. He was brought up at lona under St. Columba, and
Adamnan tells a story of his once stealing into the church
for secret prayer at night when all were asleep. After an
hour's prayer in the side alcove, the youth saw Columba
enter the church for the same purpose, shining with dazzling
light.

Fergna Brit is to be distinguished from the Fergno or
Virgno of Adamnan's closing chapter, who came from a
monastery in Ireland to an anchorite's cell in Hinba.

In Fergna's time, on Sunday the iyth of April 617, St.
Donnan, the Abbot of Eigg, and his fifty-two monks were
slaughtered in their monastery by Picts. One old Irish
account says they provoked the queen of the country by
taking up their abode where her sheep were kept, and though
the people were friendly, she said, " Let them all be killed."
St. Columba's prophecy of their martyrdom has been men-
tioned in the previous chapter. He seems to have foreseen
their danger.

5. Seghine (623-652) had a long and important tenure of
the abbacy. As the Celtic Church came more into contact
with the rest of the world, their old-fashioned computation of
Easter began to provoke controversy. A certain Cummian,
probably a monk of Durrow, advocated the Roman correction
of Easter, and gained southern Ireland to the reform ; but
the north, under the influence of lona, held out against the
change from St. Columba's and what they believed to have

THE CENTURY AFTER COLUMBA. 55

been St. John's practice. Abbot Seghine was a leader among
the conservatives, and Cummian wrote him a learned and
celebrated letter on the subject in 634. Seghine is also one
of eleven "teachers and abbots of the Scots" addressed by
name in a letter of the Pope-elect and clergy of Rome on
the same matter, which was written in 640 and is given by
Bede.

On the attitude of lona on the Paschal question, Bede
says that St. Columba " left successors distinguished for their
great charity, divine love, and strict attention to their rules
of discipline : following, indeed, uncertain cycles in their com-
putation of the great festival, because, far away as they were
out of the world, no one had supplied them with the synodal
decrees relating to the Paschal observance ; yet withal dili-
gently observing such works of piety and charity as they
could find in the Prophetic, Evangelic, and Apostolic
writings."

It was in Seghine's time that lona, having converted
Scotland, began to help to convert England as well. In the
year that Columba died, the Roman monk Augustine had
come to Canterbury and begun the evangelization of the
Saxons. St. Augustine is justly called the Apostle of Eng-
land, but the work done in the country by the Scottish monks
after his death was enormous. Nearest to them in the north,
King Edwin reigned over Northumbria. Thither came St.
Paulinus, one of Augustine's companions, with some helpers,
and Edwin and multitudes of the Northumbrians received
baptism — many perhaps too hastily, for when war broke out
and the King was slain the Church fell with him. Meanwhile
Oswald, the rightful heir to the throne, was converted to
Christianity when a political refugee in Scotland, and lona
itself was almost certainly the place of his baptism. He
returned to face his enemies, and on the eve of battle St.
Columba appeared to him in a vision and promised him the
victory which the morrow realized. St. Columba's biographer
adds : — " My predecessor, our abbot Failbhe, related this

56 THE STORY OF IONA.

narrative to me, Adamnan, nothing doubting, and he declared
that he had heard it from the mouth of King Oswald himself
as he related this same vision to Seghine the abbot."

The Venerable Bede, himself a Northumbrian and born
about forty years later, describes the council of the monks of
lona which sent Aidan, one of their number, to Oswald in place
of an unsuccessful man who had given up the rough stubborn
Englishmen in despair and had come home again to the
monastery. St. Aidan was consecrated bishop and despatched
to the scene in 635, and built a monastery in Lindisfarne or
Holy Island, on the east coast of Northumberland. He
preached to the people in Gaelic at first, while King Oswald,
now a great sovereign, sat at his feet interpreting into English.
The King's good life was crowned by a death which the
English Church esteemed as a martyrdom, in battling for
his people and faith against the common enemies of both.
Aidan outlived him for some years, and continued to labour
devotedly and successfully to the end.

Two other lona monks, Finan and Colman, followed
Aidan in the see of Lindisfarne, and carried on his work.
But the Easter question came up in Colman's time, for they
were now in contact with the Latin mission in England ;
and the Celtic bishop, rather than change his practice, felt
obliged to return to lona, whence he passed on to Ireland.
The devoted work of the Scots, however, lived on in
Northumbria, and Melrose — a daughter house of Lindis-
farne— produced the great St. Cuthbert, the ninth bishop.
Some two centuries later, the see was transferred from
Lindisfarne to Chester-le-Street, and soon afterwards to
Durham, where the successors of Aidan of lona have con-
tinued ever since.

Two monks of lona were the first bishops of the
Mercians, in the Midlands of England, where Diuma, the
first, died in 658, after two years' episcopate. Cellach, his
successor, was forced to return to lona, probably on account
of a revolt of the Mercians against Northumbria at this

THE CENTURY AFTER COLUMBA. 57

time. The see was fixed at Litchfield by the fifth bishop,
St. Chad, an Englishman, but trained and sent out by
Lindisfarne. They also sent his brother, St. Cedd, to be
Bishop of the East Saxons. Augustine's companion,
Mellitus, had been expelled from London about the year
617, and died, Archbishop of Canterbury, in 624. Cedd was
bishop from 654 to 664, and reconverted the people from
thirty years of heathenism, into which they had relapsed.

Thus lona, directly and through Lindisfarne, converted
or reconverted a very large part of England ; and, as
Bishop Lightfoot of Durham puts it, "the simplicity and
devotion, the free spirit, the tenderness and love, the
apostolic zeal of the missionaries of lona," combined with
" the more complete organization and the higher culture of
which Rome was the schoolmistress," to form the English
Church.

We have been led far from lona and somewhat past
Abbot Seghine's time. We return now to the Hebrides, to
note that St. Beccan, a monk of lona, became a hermit in
the Isle of Rum at least as early as 633, when Cummian,
already mentioned, addresses his Paschal epistle to Seghine
and to " Beccan the solitary, a dear brother both in the
flesh and in the spirit." It is evident that he was by no
means dissociated from his community and their interests
by the solitary life which he had chosen. There was a
monastery on the adjacent island of Eigg, and lona coracles
passed near both islands in entering or issuing from the
Sound of Mull, and on the route between lona and Skye.
s Beccan lived until 677, he followed with interest and
prayer the whole apostolate of Aidan and his immediate
successors in lona's new mission field on the other side of
Britain. "Candidus et benignus" — guileless and kindly —
are the epithets in which his character is summed up.

6. Suibhne (the First), 652-657, is the only one of the
first eight successors of St. Columba whose kinship to the
Founder is not recorded.

58 THE STORY OF IONA.

7. Cummian the Fair (657-669) was Seghine's nephew.
In 664 St. Colman of Lindisfarne returned to lona " to con-
sult with his people what was to be done," says Bede, in
consequence of the conference at Whitby, which determined
in favour of the Roman Easter for Northumbria. Some
rather derogatory remarks on St. Columba had been made in
the conference, and it was perhaps to vindicate their Founder
from this slight, as reported by Colman on his arrival in
lona, that Abbot Cummian wrote his book On the Virtues of
St. Columba, which Adamnan names and often quotes.

St. Beccan's brother, Cummian, who wrote to Seghine and
Beccan in 633 in favour of the Roman Easter, is considered
on that ground to be a different person from Cummian the
Fair, as it would hardly be possible for the holder of such
views to become Abbot of lona as yet.

After a few years in lona, Colman and his followers from
Lindisfarne went over to Ireland, and formed a monastery in
the little west-coast island of Innisbofin. Bede describes his
virtues at Lindisfarne in glowing terms, and what he says of
the monastery there will doubtless apply to lona likewise.
" How great was his and his predecessors' observance of
poverty, how great their continence, the very place which
they governed shows, for there were very few buildings
besides the church found at their departure ; those only, to
wit, without which their life could not have been carried on.
They had no money, but cattle, for if they received any
money from rich persons, they immediately gave it to the
poor, there being no need to gather money or provide
houses for the entertainment of the great men of the world
— such never resorted to the church save to pray and to hear
the Word of God. The King himself, when he had the
opportunity, used to come with only five or six attendants,
and depart again after prayer in the church. But if per-
chance they took food, they contented themselves with the
simple everyday fare of the brethren, and asked for naught
else."

THE CENTURY AFTER COLUMBA. 59

8. Failbhe (669-679) saw a great extension of the Church
to the north of Ardnamurchan and in the Isle of Skye,
which, however, was not accomplished from lona, but by St.
Maelrubha, Abbot of Bangor, who founded his Scottish
monastery at Applecross, on the mainland opposite Skye.
This has been called a " further great effort from Ireland to
follow up St. Columba's and other missions of the century
previous, by a more northern settlement." The missionaries
of lona and of Applecross divided the work in Skye between
them.

The Annals of Ulster tell us that Magh Lunge, the chief
monastery founded by Columba in Tiree, was burned in 672.
It may have been done by Picts, as they had harried St.
Comgall in the same island in the previous century, and more
recently had murdered the monks of Eigg.

9. Adamnan (679-704) was the most famous Abbot of lona
after the Founder. He was a Connaught man, of Columba's
clan, and probably joined the brotherhood in Seghine's time,
as he was born in 624, and was therefore twenty-eight years
old when that abbot died. Some of his elders in the monastery
had been Columba's monks, and used to tell the young man
what they remembered about the great Saint, and especially
about his last days, the story of which Adamnan has so
beautifully reproduced at the end of his biography. As a monk
Adamnan shared to the full in the necessary activities of the
island community. Thus he speaks of himself and others as
engaged on one occasion in hauling overland long boats
hollowed out of pine and oak trees, bringing great timbers for
ship and house building, and praying and fasting withal for
favourable winds.

In 675, at fifty-five years of age, Adamnan was elected to
the abbacy. About twelve years later, lona Monastery, pro-
bably still Columba's original building, was repaired at the
expense of Malduin, King of Dalriada, and the Abbot himself
led an expedition of twelve coracles to the mainland to tow
back oak trees for the purpose. At least this expedition,

60 THE STORY OF IONA.

which he describes in his Life of St. Columba, tallies
with the mention of the royal benefaction which is found
elsewhere.

Adamnan says he wrote St. Columba's Life at the urgent
request of the brethren. His other chief book is on the Holy
Places of Palestine, as described to him by Arculf, a French
bishop, who, on his return from an extensive tour in the East,
was driven by a storm on to the west coast of Britain, says Bede,
and found his way to lona. There in the long winter evenings
he told his story to appreciative listeners, the Abbot wrote
down his descriptions quickly on waxed tablets, and afterwards
made a copy on parchment, and Arculf drew plans for him of
the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and three other famous
churches, which are reproduced in the edition of the work in
Migne's Patrologia. Arculf's stories about St. George, which
he " learned in the city of Constantinople from some well-
informed citizens," show that the great martyr's fame reached
lona centuries before the English army took him for their
patron Saint.

The Venerable Bede inserts in his Church History long
quotations from an abridgement by himself of Adamnan on
the Holy Places. He calls Adamnan " a good and wise man,
and most nobly instructed in the knowledge of the Scrip-
tures." Adamnan fasted daily except Sundays and Thurs-
days and was zealous in good works. In Ireland he obtained
the final and effective abolition of the custom of women
fighting in battle, and the one thing said of him in the
ancient kalendar of Angus the Culdee is that to him the
Lord granted the liberation of the women of the Gael.

The first royal burials in lona for which there is good
evidence are those of the Pictish King, Brude mac Bile, who
was a great friend of the Abbot, and Egfrid, King of
Northumbria, who was killed in war with the Picts in 685
and brought to the sacred island. Egfrid was succeeded by
his brother Aldfrid, who had been educated in lona as
Adamnan's foster son. On his accession he set free sixty

THE CENTURY AFTER COLUMBA. 6l

Irish captives of Egfrid's at the request of Adamnan, who
went to Northumbria to plead for them.

The English Benedictine monks of Northumbria con-
verted Adamnan to the Roman Easter, and while advocating
its adoption in the north of Ireland, he also gave up the
Celtic tonsure, and came back to lona with the Roman circle
of hair round his crown instead of the bare front of the Celtic
monks. " It was a great surprise to his congregation to
see him with that tonsure," an Irish chronicler remarks.
Although he had the courage of his convictions and shared
the prevailing over-estimate of the importance of these
things, he was, as Bede says, " a man most devoted to peace
and unity," and he died among his brethren at lona on the
23rd of September 704, before another Easter could bring
up the Paschal question again as a matter of difference.
They seem to have erected a cross to his memory, for a spot
near the bay opposite the middle of the village was called
Adamnan's Cross in Gaelic until recent times. This name
may be extinct now, as so many similar ones are tending to
become, but the bay is still Port a' Chroisein, Bay of the
Cross.

Adamnan's abbacy closes the seventh century. These
hundred years after the Founder's death were a great
period in lona's history. The illustrious monastery in what
Adamnan styles " this our primatial island," was supreme,
not only over its own off-shoots in Scotland, but over
the great senior foundations of Columba in Ireland. Its
missionary zeal had found a fresh outlet in England, and
its learning reached its height in Adamnan himself.

CHAPTER VII.

THE EIGHTH AND NINTH CENTURIES.

THE eighth century has a succession of eight abbots.

10. Conamhail (704-710).

11. Dunchadh (710-717). The annals date his appoint-
ment three years before his predecessor's death. He may
have begun as a coadjutor abbot, or there may have been
factions over the Easter question, and nominations by both
parties. This unhappy controversy gave trouble in lona
from Adamnan's time until the inevitable transition to the
general usage of the Church had been made.

In Dunchadh's third year, 712, Coeddi, called Bishop
of la, died. He was probably a bishop resident in the
monastery. In the next year, Dorbene Fada, or the Tall,
" obtained the cathedra of la," but died within five months.
This record of his appointment (apparently) to the abbacy
in the middle of Dunchadh's term of office is strange, but
resembles Dunchadh's own beginning. The writer on
Dorbene in the Dictionary of Christian Biography says
that a schism in the monastery "is in itself improbable,
and has no authority in the annals." He prefers the ex-
planation that Dorbene was appointed a tanist abbot, or
coadjutor with right of succession. The record of the
death of a tanist abbot in 937 (next chapter) shows that
the custom existed in lona.

The oldest existing copy of Adamnan's Life of St.
Columba is written by a scribe who says at the end,
" Whosoever readeth these books on the miracles of
Columba, let him beseech the Lord for me, Dorbene, that
after death I may possess eternal life." Critics have no

THE EIGHTH AND NINTH CENTURIES. 63

doubt that the writer is Dorbene Fada ; and, as he died
only nine years after Adamnan, he very probably copied
the book, when a monk under him, at the time of its
composition. The manuscript is the oldest one of ancient
Scotland that has come down to us. It is in the Public
Library at Schaffhausen, but came from Reichenau, a
monastery on Lake Constance, originally founded by St.
Columbanus. The manuscript must have been carried to
the Continent in days when zealous missionaries and
learned teachers of the Celtic Church were well known in
Europe. A century later, we find an Abbot of Reichenau
writing, in Latin verse, the praises of the lona martyrs of
825.

The turning point of the Easter controversy at lona is the
celebration of the festival at the reformed date by Dunchadh
and his monks in 716, at the persuasion of a Saxon priest
named Egbert, who came to the island and remained there for
the rest of his days. Dunchadh died in the following year.

12. Faelcu (717-724) has his appointment placed by the
annalists a year before his predecessor's death. He began
with having to face a serious occurrence — the expulsion of
all the Columban monks from the north and east of Scotland.
Nectan, the King of the Picts, determined to introduce the
Roman Easter and tonsure into his dominions. lona had
just changed its Easter, but the monasteries in Pictland had
not, and the hasty king gave them no further time. The loss
of the Pictish connection greatly reduced lona's power and
importance. In the next year, 718, lona gave in on the
second point, and the Irish chronicler notes, "the coronal
tonsure is given to the family of la."

Two years before Faelcu's death, Feidhlimidh Beg, Phelim
the Little, is represented as receiving the principatus or head-
ship of lona, and he did not die till 759, during which time
three successors of Faelcu are recorded. If Phelim was not
a rival nominee, it would seem that he was a coadjutor
who was thrice passed over. He " may have headed the

64 THE STORY OF IONA.

conservative or traditional party, which was then certainly on
the decline."

13. Cillene Fada (724-726). Cillen the Tall.

14. Cillene Droicteach (726-752). Cillen the Bridgemaker.
This abbot is in the Irish kalendars under July 3, and the
Donegal martyrology says, " It was he that brought to Erin
the shrine and numerous relics which Adamnan collected, in
order to make peace and friendship between the races of
Conall and Ewan." This journey took place in the year after
Cillen's appointment. After his return to lona he retired to
a hermit's cell, from which he governed the community,
unless, indeed, he was already a hermit when elected to the
abbacy, for we know from the annals that he was an anchorite
abbot to his death. The community's choice of an anchorite
saint for abbot could be explained by veneration for his piety
and desire for his special intercession for the monastery.
Nor is the mission of peace to Ireland inconsistent with his
being already a hermit, for such have often issued from their
cells at the call of Christian duty.

The name Cillene Droicteach may mean Cillen the Bishop,
droicteach standing for the Latin pontifex* Or it may mean
literally a bridge-builder. Thus Fiachna, the son of Aid Ron,
a king of Ulster just after Cillene's time, was called Fiachna
Dubh Droictech, Dark Fiachna the Bridgemaker, because he
made a bridge over " the Bog of the Ox," and others.t If
Abbot Cillen's surname has this literal meaning, it is probable,
as Skene suggests, that he gained the appellation by setting
his monks to build the causeway which traverses the Lochan
M6r, then a large sheet of water — that it was made as a means
of communication between the monastery and the Hermit's
Cell in the west — and that the cell was the abode of this
anchorite abbot, whence he ruled his community from afar.

During the early part of Cillen's long abbacy, St. Ronan,
whose name is perpetuated in lona, presided over the

* Whitley Stokes on the Irish Annals, s.v. pontifex.

t MacFirbis, quoted in Reeves, Antiquities of Down , etc.

THE EIGHTH AND NINTH CENTURIES. 65

monastery of Kingarth, in Bute. At this time the Venerable
Bede passed away, in his monastic cell at Jarrow. We have
quoted him on St. Columba ; on Lindisfarne, which he once
visited ; on St. Adamnan, who paid a visit to Jarrow when
Bede was a lad there ; and on the change of Easter at lona,
which to his joy he lived to see accomplished. In his simple
delight in goodness he often sings the praises of the devoted
Celtic monks, even those who were most opposed to the
Paschal reform.

The perils of the deep amid which the hardy Scottish
monks did their work are forcibly illustrated by two
catastrophes of Cillen's time. In 737 the Abbot of Apple-
cross, near Skye, "was drowned in the deep sea, with his
sailors, to the number of 22." In 749 lona suffered. The
Irish chronicler's brief entry is, " A great wind. The
drowning of the family of la." In the previous century, in
Seghine's abbacy, the " wreck of a boat of the family of la "
had occurred. lona and its ancient dependency of Tiree lie
in the mouth of a very stormy stretch of sea extending up
to Skye and Lewis, and shipwrecks were numerous on the
reefs south of Tiree before Skerryvore Light was placed
there.

Wee Phelim, who had been appointed to his office (p. 63)
four years before Cillen Droicteach, outlived him for seven
years, and it seems highly probable that he acted as the
deputy of the anchorite abbot in such matters as his mode
)f life precluded him from attending to personally.

15. Slebhine (752-767).

16. Suibhne (767-772). This is the second Sweeny who
fas abbot.

17. Breasal (772-801) seems to have entered on his
government at a prosperous time. He had under him as
monks Niall Frassach, who, after reigning over Ireland for
seven years, had exchanged his crown for a cowl, and King
Artgal of Connaught, both of whom died in lona Monastery
at this time after some years in Religious life. They are

E

66 THE STORY OF IONA.

probably included in the tradition of Irish kings buried in
Reilig Odhrain.

The death of Conall, Abbot of Magh Lunge in Tiree, is
recorded for 774, after which this ancient monastery dis-
appears from history and probably came to an end. The
Abbot of lona obviously could not leave monks to be
slaughtered in so exposed an island when the Danes
appeared, as now they did. This dark cloud of woe began
to overshadow the prospect towards the close of Breasal's
life, when the pirate ships of the Northern Pagans first
appeared on the British coasts. The storm broke first on
Northumbria. At the beginning of the year 793, the Anglo-
Saxon Chronicle says that " the ravaging of heathen men
lamentably destroyed God's church at Lindisfarne through
rapine and slaughter." In the following year they fell upon
Jarrow, where Bede had spent his life, and the Irish annals
first report them in the Western Isles of Scotland.

In 795 a passing Danish fleet made the first attack on
lona, and sacked the place, though the monks seem to have
escaped in time to save their lives, as there is no mention of
any being killed. It would not take long to get across to
Mull and hide there. Abbot Breasal was taken from the
darkening world six years later, before things got to their
worst. Hatred of Christianity and greed for plunder com-
bined to attract the Danes to monasteries, where they might
expect to find defenceless old clergymen and rich church
treasures. The slaughter of their kinsmen, the heathen
tribes of North Germany, by Charlemagne in the name
of religion is supposed to have stirred up their animosity
against the Church. They sometimes tortured their victims
to death with horrible cruelty. Often must the heart-sick
watchman on Dun - 1 have seen their hundreds of ships
sweeping along the horizon southward towards more attrac-
tive Ireland, on whose green shores "the sea vomited up
hosts of Pagans " after the pioneer plunderers and scouts
had carried their reports back to the North.

THE EIGHTH AND NINTH CENTURIES. 6/

THE NINTH CENTURY.

1 8. Connachtach (801-802), "a scribe most choice and
abbot of la," had a short and troubled term of office. It
must have been in quieter times and a lower station that he
attained to fame as a " scriba selectissimus." Some marvel-
lous manuscripts of the Irish monastic scribes survive to
show what Connachtach's title implies. But alas ! for such
peaceful arts and lona's stores of precious writings in
the calamitous ninth century. The Danish attack on the
monastery in 795 proved the preliminary of a long period of
terror, blood, and fire, in which lona won the glory of " red
martyrdom," but lost well-nigh all else. In Connachtach's
first year the monastery was burned by the " Gentiles," and
the Abbot died next year. The ravagers returned again
and again, as we shall see, but after each successive
attack the love and veneration of the monks of lona for their
home forced them to re-establish themselves there at all
perils.

19. Cellach, son of Conghall (802-815). Sixty-eight of the
community were slain in 806, apparently the first lona
martyrs. It is to be supposed that the Martyrs' Bay (Plate 17)
was the Danes' landing-place and camp, and that they
dragged their victims thither and put an end to them on its
sandy shore. Of the three recorded slaughters of monks in
lona the second took place in the monastery, and tradition
connects the third with the White Sands, near the head of
the Sound, leaving Martyrs' Bay for the first.

The oversight of the Columban order was no longer
possible for the afflicted monastery, and Abbot Cellach
transferred the primacy to Kells in Ireland in 814. He may
have brought thither the magnificent manuscript since known
s the Book of Kells, for critics assign it to the eighth
century, and there is no reason why it should not have
been written and illuminated in lona by some such scribe as
Abbot Connachtach, Cellach's predecessor. The Pictish

68 THE STORY OF IONA.

King Constantine came to the rescue of the lona monks,
and built them a monastery at Dunkeld on the Tay ; but in
lona itself new buildings were bravely begun, this time of
stone and on the higher and better site where the Cathedral
stands. Such, at least, is Dr. Skene's conjecture as to the
time when the change of site was made.

Now, if not before, St. Columba's grave was opened and
his remains were taken out of the stone coffin and placed in
a portable shrine ornamented with rich metal work, in accord-
ance with the Continental custom which made its way into
the Celtic Church in the eighth century. The shrine seems
to have been in Ireland during the building of the new
monastery at lona. Cellach did not return to Scotland, but
resigned the abbacy and died soon afterwards.

20. Dermid (815-832). About three years after his
accession this abbot brought back St. Columba's shrine from
Ireland, and it would then be set in the new church, on the
south side of the altar, for all to see. Dermid was absent in
Ireland again in 825, when another Danish massacre took
place. This is commemorated as the Passion of St. Blathmac
and the Martyrs of lona, on January I9th. Before the attack
the monks hid the shrine in the earth and covered it with
sods. Blathmac seems to have been the acting superior and
to have remained purposely ignorant of where the shrine was
buried. He was at the altar celebrating the conventual Mass
in the dark winter morning when the heathen burst into the
church, slew the worshipping monks, and demanded the
shrine from him. He refused, and they cut him down,
commending himself to God.

There are short notices of the martyrdom in the Irish
annals, but the details are given in a Latin hexameter poem
on St. Blathmac, by Walafrid Strabo, a distinguished monk
of the Irish monastery of St. Gall, in Switzerland, and
afterwards Abbot of Reichenau, where he died only twenty-
four years after the event. Of Blathmac's posthumous fame
he adds : —

THE EIGHTH AND NINTH CENTURIES. 69

" He who for Christ's dear name endured the pangs of a martyr
Rests in the selfsame place, men say who tell of his glory,
Where for his holy merits God in miracles worketh."

His resting where he died and the mention of miracles
point to his relics having been enshrined, like St. Columba's,
and exposed to the veneration of pilgrims to lona. As Dr.
Skene has suggested, the two shrines perhaps stood in the
very ancient little oratory called St. Columba's Tomb, beside
the Cathedral door. It is of the earliest type of Irish stone
chapels (see Chapter XII.), and contains two stone cists, one
nine feet long, on the south side, and the other nearly seven

STONB CIST ON SOUTH SIDE IN " ST. COLUMBA'S TOMB."

feet long, on the north side of where the altar would have
stood. These may have supported the shrines, the great one
of St. Columba in the place of honour on the south. This
would resemble the arrangement in a new church built for St.
Bridget's monastery of Kildare at about the same date, in
which the sacred remains of St. Bridget and her chaplain, the
holy Bishop Conlaidh, " rested on the right and left of the
decorated altar, deposited in monuments adorned with various
embellishments of gold and silver and gems of precious stone,
with crowns of gold and silver hanging above, and with divers
images, and curtains of divers colours." That the lona oratory
held the shrine of Columba's bones is probable from its

70 THE STORY OF IONA.

traditional designation as his Tomb. If the shrine that stood
opposite, as the stone cists now lie, was not St. Blathmac's,
both may have been reliquaries of St. Columba, containing
respectively his " marta," or enshrined bones, and a collection
of his " mionna " or other relics, the chief of which were his
cowl, cross, and psalter. Both the marta and the mionna of
the Saint are mentioned in the Irish annals of the period.
Abbot Dermid, who had brought the marta back from Ireland
at the beginning of his term, brought also the mionna near its
close. Further transportations of the reliquaries by both him
and his successor are also recorded.

21. Abbot Innrechtach (832-854) succeeded Dermid. In
843 Kenneth MacAlpine, King of Dalriada, succeeded also to
the Pictish throne, thus becoming the first king of all Scot-
land, and the two kingdoms coalesced permanently into one.
Kenneth translated relics of St. Columba from lona to
Dunkeld, which he made a bishopric and the ecclesiastical
centre of his kingdom. He is said also to have brought the
Coronation Stone from Argyllshire to Scone, whence Edward
I. of England carried it off to Westminster. Legend says
that this stone, now in the Coronation Chair, is the stone on
which St. Columba crowned King Aidan in lona (Chapter V.),
and that it was originally Jacob's pillow. Skene's book on
it questions all its history before its use for Scottish corona-
tions at Scone.

The annals say that Abbot Innrechtach, sapiens optimus,
was "martyred" by the Saxons on his way to Rome in 854.
After him the succession of resident abbots of lona is for the
first time broken, and Cellach, son of Aillel, Abbot of Kildare,
holds also the abbacy of lona. Though non-resident, he
visited Scotland, for his death " in the country of the Picts "
is recorded for 865. Cellach's appointment to lona, in addi-
tion to Kildare, shows how the monastery had declined in
importance, and probably in efficiency also, as the rest of the
Celtic Church was now doing. Notwithstanding this, King
Kenneth MacAlpine was buried in lona in 860, and as a

PLATE 18. ST. JOHN'S CROSS AND ST. COLU.MBA's TOMB, Page JO.

THE EIGHTH AND NINTH CENTURIES.

place of royal burial it became " the Westminster Abbey of
Scotland " for two centuries.

Feradhach was Abbot of lona from 865 to 880. The
Danes were now succeeded by new invaders — the Norwegian
vikings, who brought disquiet again into the Isles, though
they were not the terrible scourge that the cruel Danes had
been. They established themselves first in the Orkneys, at
the north-east extremity of Scotland over against Norway,
and thence spread down through the Western Isles and
coast, conquering and settling. A chief named Ketil Flatnef
came into the Hebrides, but was driven away to Iceland
by King Harold Harfagr, who came over from Norway
and subdued the Isles down to Man about the year 870.
King Constantine I. of Scotland fell in battle against the
Norwegians in Fife in 877. " They found the king's body,"
says the old Scottish chronicler Fordun, "and bore it with
deep wailing to the island of lona, where it was enshrined
with great honours in his father's bosom." In the following
year, the Irish records tell us, " the shrine of Columkill and
his reliquaries in general were taken to Erin for refuge from
the foreigners." Abbot Feradhach's anxieties must have
been great in the midst of such dangers.

An abbot named Flann died in 891, but his successor is
not known, nor is another abbot heard of for more than forty
years.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE LATER CELTIC PERIOD.

IONA seems to have enjoyed a long period of peaceful
obscurity in the tenth century. The Columban order was
now presided over by a dignitary called the Co-arb of
Columkill, Heir of Columba, who was usually the abbot of
some chief monastery in Ireland. The names of the co-arbs
are preserved, but only a few of the local abbots of lona.
There are, however, other signs that the monastery was
flourishing in its way, and we can even tell pretty well what
it looked like say about the middle of the century.

There were several little stone churches,* the principal
one being, perhaps, the roofless church in the north-east of
the Cathedral enclosure, with the foundation of what may
have been the refectory near it. The tiny oratory by the
Cathedral door has been already mentioned. There was a
row of buildings north of it, the outer wall of which has been
traced on the west of the Benedictine cloister.

Some beautifully carved high stone crosses stood beside
the monastery, and over all rose up a high round tower like a
lighthouse, the circular foundation of which, six feet thick,
has been discovered underground at the west end of the
Cathedral. The whole formed a group similar to some much
better preserved monasteries of the same period in Ireland,
where, in many cases, the famous round towers still stand.
These towers began to be built in Ireland about 900 A.D.,and
served as belfries, landmarks, look-out stations, and forts of

* The old Celtic churches in Scotland and Ireland are all small. Where
there were many monks they either had service in several little churches at once
or said the offices in successive bands, sometimes eren keeping up a continuous
round of praise day and night by this means.

THE LATER CELTIC PERIOD. 73

refuge. They vary from 50 to 125 feet in height, and the door
is high above ground and only to be reached by a ladder.
The protection they afforded was not always effectual ; thus
the Ulster Annals record that in 950 " the bell-tower of Slaine
was burned by the foreigners with it full of relics and
distinguished persons, together with Caeincachair, lector of
Slaine, and the crosier of the patron Saint, and a bell, the
best of bells." It is not unlikely that the lona tower was
built by this time. One at St. Patrick's, in the Isle of Man,
is assigned to this century.

By the tower stood the crosses, of which St. Martin's
alone remains entire. The whole group of buildings and
monuments was such as Mr. Romilly Allen speaks of as
follows: "The High Crosses of Ireland are in most cases
associated with a characteristic set of ecclesiastical structures,
consisting of a Round Tower and several small churches.
This class of monuments consequently belongs to the time
when the artistic talents of the Celtic monks, which had been
previously entirely absorbed in illuminating MSS., were
directed into the new channel of architecture. The High
Cross of Muiredach, at Monasterboice, Co. Louth, and that
of King Fland at Clonmacnois, King's Co., are proved by the
inscriptions upon them to have been erected during the first
quarter of the tenth century. There is such a general family
likeness between most of the High Crosses of Ireland that
they are probably all of about the same date."

The lona crosses are similar to the Irish ones, and there
is every reason to suppose that they were carved and set up
early in the tenth century.

The Norwegians remained dominant in the Isles for all
the rest of the Celtic Church period, but were not aggressive
against the Church. A second Scottish king fell in battle
with them in 900, and a third in 963, and both were buried
in lona like the rest of their line.

About the year 900 a devout Scottish husband and wife
made a pilgrimage to lona to pray God to give them a child,

74 THE STORY OF IONA.

and spent a night in fasting and supplication at the shrine of
St. Columba. The woman bore a son, Cadroe, and afterwards
another, upon which they brought their first-born to the tomb
of the Saint to give him to God, and left him with a holy old
man, his uncle, who seems to have been a monk at lona. He
was afterwards sent to Armagh for his studies — an indication
of truth in the Life of St. Cadroe (from which Dr. Skene has
brought the story to light), for at that very time the Abbot of
Armagh was Co-arb of Columkill, and his monastery there-
fore a likely centre for the education of novices. St. Cadroe
returns to Scotland, but eventually goes to the Continent,
and dies Abbot of St. Clement's, Metz. He seems to be the
only monk traceable from lona to Europe, though many
Irishmen found their way to the Continental Church.

In 908 St. Andrews became the primatial see of Scot-
land, the head of the Church of which lona had been the
glorious mother. There are only a few bare scraps of
information about the island at this time. " Angus Mac-
Muircetaigh, a learned man, anchorite, and tanist abbot of
la," died in 937. A tanist was an assistant-superior with
right of succession when the abbot died, in accordance with
an Irish custom which appears to have been common at
lona two centuries before this. Caencomhrac, Abbot of la,
died in 947, and Finghin, anchorite and Bishop of la, in 966.
In 976 "the shrine of Columkill was robbed by Donald
MacMurcadha," whose paternal name happens to be the
same as the designation of a little rock-islet in the ocean
a mile to the west of lona, known as Stac MhicMhurchaidh
— i.e., Mac Murdoch's Rock.

Two years after the robbery of the shrine the death of
Fiachra, the "arcinnech" or steward of la, is recorded. If
the abbot of the time was an anchorite, like some of his near
predecessors, a steward's services would be peculiarly useful.

A great abbot died in 980, Mughron, " Co-arb of Colum-
kill both in Erin and Alba," or, according to another annalist,
" Abbot of la, scribe and bishop, the most learned of the

PLATE 19. ST. MAKTINS CK

THE LATER CELTIC PERIOD. 75

three divisions," an expression supposed to denote the three
Gaelic countries of Ireland, Scotland, and Man. Some
hymn verses of his composition % are in the Irish Liber
Hymnorum.

In Mughron's last year a notable pilgrim, Anlaf the King
of the Danes of Dublin, came to lona after a defeat in battle
by the Irish, and died there " after penance and a good life."
Anlaf had become a Christian in England, and was con-
nected by marriage with the Scottish royal family, but his
Danish subjects at Dublin continued heathen, and in 986
Maelciaran, the Co-arb of Columkill in Ireland, "suffered
red martyrdom " at their hands.

At the end of the year 986 a plundering host of Limerick
Danes descended on lona in the night before Christmas,
and "slew the abbot and fifteen Religious of the church."
The rest probably escaped into the round tower, but the
unnamed abbot and his companions were cut off, and died
by the hands of their captors. Skene records it as a
tradition in lona that the victims of this final heathen
massacre were killed on the sands known as Traigh Bhan
nam Manach (White Beach of the Monks), near the north
end of the Sound. The story of a slaughter of monks
there is still current in the island, and they are said to have
been killed on the dark steep-sided rock * that bounds this
particular stretch of sand on the north.

In the year after this attack on the monastery, the
chronicler records " a great slaughter of the Danes who
ravaged Hy, 360 of whom were slain." The avenger was
Sigurd, Earl of Orkney, whose fleet the miscreants seem
to have fallen in with before they could get home. The
Norwegians by this time were Christian, the Danes of
Ireland were soon afterwards conquered by King Brian
Boru, and lona suffered no more heathen attacks.

Now called Sgeir nam Mart, " Rock of the Cows," because it was used for
landing cattle before the boat pier at the village was built. The beach is seen in
Plate 2, on the extreme right.

76 THE STORY OF IONA.

Maelbride, a resident Abbot of lona, died in 1005, and
Flannobhra, Co-arb of lona, in 1025. The title of co-arb
given to this abbot suggests that the monastery had risen to
higher importance at the time. The Irish chief, Maelruanaidh,
the head of St. Columba's clan, made a pilgrimage to lona in
1026, and 1047 '1S marked by the death in the island of
another pilgrim, Bishop Cethernach.

But although the Religious life and pilgrimages are thus
seen to have continued, the next incident furnishes an ex-
ample of the now general decay of discipline in the Celtic
Church. In 1070 an Abbot of lona, MacBaetan, was killed
by a son of the Co-arb of Columkill. A layman had probably
obtained the titular headship of the order in Ireland, with its
emoluments — for this kind of usurpation of Church titles and
orifices was becoming common — and his son committed the
act of violence recorded, perhaps in making some aggression
on the abbot's rights.

The monastery found a benefactress in St. Margaret of
Scotland, the Saxon princess who fled from England on its
conquest by the Normans, and was crowned as Malcolm
Canmore's queen in 1070. After her death she was canonized
for her virtues and good works. According to Ordericus
Vitalis, she " restored the monastery of Hy, which Columba,
the servant of Christ, erected in the time of Brude, son of
Meilcon, King of the Picts. It had fallen into ruin in the
storms of war and the lapse of ages, but the faithful queen
rebuilt and restored it, and gave the monks an endowment
for the performance of the Lord's work."

King Malcolm was the son of Duncan, who on his murder
by Macbeth was buried, like his predecessors, in lona. But
Malcolm gave up lona as a royal burial place, and he and
Margaret, on their deaths in 1093, were ^id to rest in their
new Abbey of Dunfermline.

The Western Isles fluctuated at this time between Scottish
and Norwegian possession, and when the Diocese of Man and
the Isles was formed in this century, the first bishops were

THE LATER CELTIC PERIOD. 77

Norwegians. Bishop Hrolfr, the first we hear of, died before
1066, and was buried in the Isle of Man. The cathedral was
in Man, and more than 400 years ensued before lona Abbey
became the cathedral of the Scottish Isles. In 1 154, Ragnald
being bishop, the see was put under the primacy of the
Archbishop of Trondhjem, in Norway.

One day in the year 1097, trie brethren of lona looked out

on the waters of the Sound covered with the long war-galleys

of the North. King Magnus of Norway stepped ashore,

proclaiming peace and safety to all men. At the monastery

he looked into " the lesser church of Columkill " — perhaps the

little oratory of the shrine with its sacred splendours — but

straightway drawing back, and shutting the door, he exclaimed

that no one must be so bold as to enter that holy place. He

was on an expedition to enforce his claim on the Isles and

Man, and during his long operations in the Hebrides he and

his men adopted the Highland kilt or philabeg, whence his

people called him Magnus Barelegs when he got home again.

Abbot Dunchadh, whose death is recorded for 1099, was

probably the abbot who received King Magnus on his visit

just mentioned. Silence then enwraps lona for sixty-five

years, until it is broken in 1164 by an interesting notice, in

the Annals of Ulster, of a deputation to Ireland. " Select

members of the muinntir of la, viz., the archpriest, Augustine,

and the lector, that is, Dubsidhe, and the disertach, that is,

MacGilladuff, and the head of the Culdees, namely, Mac-

Forcellaigh, and select members of the muinntir besides

came to ask the Co-arb of Columkill, namely, Flaherty

O'Brolchan, to accept the abbacy of la, by advice of

Somerled and the men of Argyll and the Isles. But the

Co-arb of Patrick and the King of Erin, that is, O'Lochlan,

and the nobles of the family of Ewan prevented him."

This shows the monastery going on under its officers,
lacking only a chief head. They tried to get the co-arb of
the order, who was a distinguished Abbot of Deny and an
honorary bishop, to come and take charge of lona. The

78 THE STORY OF IONA.

leader of the deputation, Augustine the sagart mor or great
priest, we may suppose to have been the prior or assistant-
superior. As such he would act as abbot during the vacancy.
Dubsidhe's duties as lector (ferleiginn) would be teaching
and preaching. He would probably give lectures in the
monastery. MacGilladuff's title of disertach means "desert
man," eremite or hermit. Disert was an old Irish term for
a hermitage ; the name, though meaningless in modern
Gaelic, still attaches to an ancient religious site to the north
of lona Cathedral ; and here MacGilladuff lived the solitary
life from which he was summoned to take part in this
important affair.

We see above that a Head of Culdees was one of the
dignitaries of lona Monastery in 1 164. Culdees were hermits
who lived in community in a more retired way than ordinary
monks ; that is, they stayed at home to pray and fast and
work, following what is called the " contemplative " religious
life, whereas other monks went about preaching and doing
other ministerial and missionary work.

The Culdee rule was instituted at Tallaght, near Dublin,
by St. Maelruain, who died in 787. Culdee is for Ce*le De,
Servant of God, and though the title C£le D6 is given by old
Irish writers to some holy persons before Maelruain, it has
not, in their cases, the definite meaning which it afterwards
acquired. One of Maelruain's disciples was Angus or
Oengus the Culdee, whose writings have been quoted in
these pages. At Tallaght they used to keep watch and chant
psalms in their church continuously by twos, night and day.

The Culdees spread to Scotland about the year 800, so
that there were thenceforward both Columban monasteries
and Culdee hermitages in the kingdom. In lona, as at
Armagh in Ireland, Culdees and monks were associated
together. There is no mention of Culdees at lona before
1164, and they may have been added to the establishment
to ensure regularity in the celebration of the church services,
a duty for which they were well adapted. They had their

THE LATER CELTIC PERIOD. 79

own superior, who, according to Culdee custom, bore the title
of Cenn or Head.

In some other places in Scotland, where Culdees alone
were in charge of collegiate churches, they had by this time
fallen away from their old strict rules. Thus at St. Andrews
they had from monks become married clergymen, and
handed on their office from father to son. Elsewhere, even
where they remained single, they were not living according
to their rule. This furnished an excuse for suppressing them
everywhere, as part of the reform of the Celtic Church which
was carried out in Scotland in the twelfth century.

It remains to say a word about Somerled, who supported
the lona monks in their attempt to get an abbot from
Ireland. He was the Lord of Argyll, a great district
comprising not only ancient Dalriada, now Argyllshire, but
most of the west coast of Scotland north of this. Somerled,
who appears to have acknowledged the King of Norway as
his overlord, was killed at Renfrew in an expedition against
the King of Scots, soon after this lona deputation in which
he interested himself.

In 1174 Maelpatrick O'Banain, Bishop of Conor and
Down, "a venerable man, full of sanctity, meekness, and
purity of heart," died in the holy island. At the beginning
of the summer of 1188 the body of Godred, the Norse King
of Man, who had died in the previous autumn, was brought
from Man to lona for burial. A certain Awley O'Daigre
died there on pilgrimage in 1188, and there also, in 1199,
" the holy Maurice O'Baoden rested in peace."

Meanwhile Church matters in Scotland had long been
taking a course divergent from lona traditions. In the
previous century St. Margaret, although so liberal to lona,
began a policy of Latinizing the Scottish Church after the
English model, and this was continued especially by King
David I. (1124-1153), the third of her sons who succeeded
to the throne. The Celtic liturgy was abolished as a
"barbarous rite," the loose organization which had come

80 THE STORY OF IONA.

down from the Columban missionary days gave place to
regular dioceses, which were put under bishops and pro-
vided with parish priests, while Benedictine monks and
Augustinian canons were brought in to take the place of
the Celtic Culdees and monks.

Remote lona escaped the longest, but sometime between
1 172 and 1 1 80 King William the Lion granted the monastery's
Lowland churches and tithes in Galloway to the canons of
Holyrood. And at the beginning of the next century,
Reginald, son of Somerled, who had inherited the Lordship
of the Isles from his father, established black-robed Benedic-
tines in lona itself, and gave them all the remaining lands
and churches of the Columban monks whose place they
were to take. As the ancient sennachie or historian of the
Macdonald clan puts it, he founded " a monastery of black
monks in I, in honour of God and St. Columkill ; a
monastery of black nuns in the same place ; and a monastery
of grey monks at Saddell." These grey monks were Cister-
cians of Savigny, who were already in the diocese, at Rushin
in Man. Black monks and nuns denote ordinary Benedic-
tines, who wear black. There were already establishments
of them in Scotland.

A letter of Pope Innocent III. (the great pontiff who
befriended St. Dominic and St. Francis) is addressed to
Abbot Celestine and the Benedictine monastery of St.
Columba in Hy, under date of December 9th, 1203. The
Pope takes the community under his protection ; confirms
them in possession of lona, Mull, Colonsay, Oronsay, and
certain other islands and churches ; and decrees that there
shall be free right of sepulture in lona, so that no one is to
put any obstacle to the devotion and last wishes of those
who desire to be buried there, except any under excom-
munication or interdict, etc. This document is preserved
in copy at the Vatican.

Next year, 1204, the Ulster Annals narrate a strange
event in lona, after which the island appears no more in

THE LATER CELTIC PERIOD. 8 1

the Irish records. Some one whom they call Cellach built a
monastery in the middle of the island, without any right,
and in dishonour of the community, thereby inflicting great
damage on the place. When north Ireland heard of this,
a party of Derry men came over, led by the Bishops of
Tyrone and Tyrconnel and the Abbots of Armagh and
Derry, and pulled down Cellach's building. Then Awley
O'Freel, the Abbot of Derry, who was a lineal descendant
of St. Columba's only brother Ewan, was elected Abbot
of lona by the votes of the assemblage.

This seems to be an account, from the Irish point of view,
of the appearance of the Benedictines in lona, and of an
explosion which not unnaturally ensued. The Celestine of
the Pope's letter above has his name put into Irish as Cellach.
It has been conjectured by Bishop Reeves that his short-lived
building in the middle of the island gave the name to Gleann
an Teampuill, the Glen of the Church, which lies to the west
of the barrier of hills overhanging the village, and opens into
the central plain at Culbhuirg Farm, opposite the Angels'
Hill. Skene supposes that the Benedictines intended to get
the Columban community out of the way by removing them
to this new site. But whether the building which was de-
stroyed was meant for them or for the newcomers themselves,
we hear no more of Awley O'Freel and the indignant Irish,
and there is no doubt that the Benedictines remained in
possession of lona. They may eventually have absorbed the
Columban monks into their body. When King David brought
Austin canons to St. Andrews sixty years before this, the
Culdees there were given the option of becoming canons, or
being replaced by the latter, one by one, as they died. We
do not know whether any settlement proved possible between
the parties in lona, or whether the last Celtic monks left their
Founder's isle for ever. They had held it for 640 years from
St. Columba's landing at Port na Curaich. The tenure of the
island and of Scotland by the mediaeval Church proved both
shorter and less glorious.

F

CHAPTER IX.

THE BENEDICTINES AND THE LORDS OF THE ISLES.

ST. BENEDICT, who died in St. Columba's youth, was as
great a monk and organizer of monastic life as the Celtic
abbot was a missionary. The Benedictine rule spread uni-
versally through Europe, and when its disciples reached
Scotland and lona, they were probably at a higher spiritual
level than the representatives of the old Celtic monks. The
are, however, no achievements to record of the Benedictin
of lona.

They used the title St. Columba's Monastery, as we see
from the Pope's letter cited in the previous chapter, but the
abbey church was specially dedicated to the Blessed Virgin
Mary, whose name still graces it. Adjoining the church are
the remains of the cloister, where they sat at their reading,
writing, or other indoor work, and assembled to file into the
choir for services and into refectory at meal times. While
they ate, one of the fathers read aloud from the appointed
book. Their prayer-place, the choir of the church, is as long
as the nave, for monastic churches had to have long chancels
to accommodate all the monks at the services. There were
Matins at midnight, then a sleep, till the morning psalmody
of Prime began the busy day, which they spent in alternate
offices of prayer and tasks of useful work, very much as their
Celtic predecessors had done. Now, however, no great
heathen mission field cried dumbly from beyond the east-
ward hills and northern waters, " Come over and help us."
Such an opportunity was given only once to lona, and that
in her earliest days, when she won most of her fame.

Besides his black monks, Reginald, as we have seen,

LOU

:

1'LATE 20. MACLEAN S CROSS : EAST FACE.

Page 82.

THE BENEDICTINES AND THE LORDS OF THE ISLES. 83

founded a sisterhood of the same great order in lona,
installing them in a convent some distance south of the
abbey. Their first prioress or superior was his sister, whose
Gaelic name is sometimes rendered Beatrice in English.
Macvurich, the clan historian of the Macdonalds, says of
her in the Book of Clanranald, " Bethog, the daughter of
Somerled, was a religious woman and a black nun." She
seems to have been active in spiritual works, for the same
writer goes on to say that she built the church called
Teampull Chairinis, in the island of Uist, which lies far out
to sea, between Barra and Lewis. Martin, an observant
traveller who made a tour of the Hebrides at the end of the
seventeenth century, records an inscription which he read on
a gravestone in lona Nunnery : " BEHAG NIGN SORLE VIC IL
VRID PRIORESSA " ; Beatrice, daughter of Somerled the son
of Gilbride, prioress.

Nothing special can be said of the life of the nuns of
lona. It was doubtless quiet and uneventful enough for the
most part, and followed the regular daily round of services
and prayer, needlework, teaching, etc., which goes on within
convent walls, At some time subsequent to their founda-
tion they either changed from St. Benedict's Rule to the
Augustinian, or gave place to Religious of the latter order ;
for in the fifteenth century the Augustinian Abbot Bowar, in
his continuation of Fordun's chronicle, describes them as
"holy nuns of the order of St. Augustine, wearing the
rochet," and the costume in which Prioress Anna appears
in her effigy in lona Nunnery confirms this.

Macvurich the sennachie, after rehearsing Lord Reginald's
good works and telling us that he was " the most distinguished
of the Galls and the Gaels * for prosperity, sway of generosity,

* The Galls, "strangers," were the Scandinavian element in the Isles, and
the Gaels the older Celtic inhabitants. Fingal, "fair stranger," meant a Nor-
wegian, and Dugal, "dark stranger," a Dane. After the Norwegian conquest
of the Hebrides, they were known to the Celts as Insi-gal, the Isles of the
Foreigners.

84 THE STORY OF IONA.

and feats of arms," goes on to tell of his end. " Having
obtained a cross from Jerusalem, partaken of the Body of
Christ, and received unction, he died, and was buried at
Reilig Odhrain in I, in the year of our Lord 1207." What
is probably his gravestone is still to be seen in the ancient
cemetery where he was laid to rest 700 years ago. His sons
Dugal and Donald, the lords respectively of Lome and
Isla, gave origin to clans called by their names, the Mac-
dougals of Lome and the Macdonalds of the Isles. Of these,
the Macdonalds, or Clan Donald, are especially connected
with the mediaeval history of lona.

After Reginald's death there was something approaching
anarchy in the Isles for a time, and the Scandinavian his-
torian Torfesen tells how two lawless Norwegians, Birkibein
and Bagli, took advantage of it. In the year 1210 they made
a piratical incursion into the Isles with twelve ships, and
plundered "even the holy island, to wit, St. Columba's,
which till that day had been free from injury by the Nor-
wegians and protected by religion." This was early trouble
for the newly established abbey. We next find an Abbot of
lona in Norway, where King Hacon in 1226 receives him,
with Simon, Bishop of the Isles, and the Earl of Orkney, at
Bergen. Simon had come to be consecrated by the Arch-
bishop of Trondhjem, the ecclesiastical chief of both bishop
and abbot. On their return to the Isles the bishop began
the building of a new cathedral at St. German's in Man, and
was buried in it twenty years later. Meanwhile the Isles
continued in a disturbed state, and there was fighting in 1229
between the Norwegians and Islesmen, in which a leader
named Ospac Hacon, son of Dugal of Lome and nephew to
Reginald, was killed at Kintyre. Like his uncle, he was
brought to lona for burial.

lona Monastery is the subject of a Papal document of this
time. A letter of Pope Innocent IV., dated at Lyons, May I,
1247, is addressed "to our beloved son the Abbot of the
venerable Monastery of St. Columba, of the Order of St.

THE BENEDICTINES AND THE LORDS OF THE ISLES. 85

Benedict, in the Sodor Diocese." The abbot, " having come
personally to our presence," is granted, with his successors,
the use of the ring and, of the mitre at divine services, like
a bishop, and may pronounce the solemn blessing in the
churches of the monastery, or in any monastery of the order,
if no legate or bishop be present. This shows that the
abbot made a journey to Lyons to visit the Pope. He may
have gone to obtain exemption from the jurisdiction of distant
Trondhjem, for the later abbots are found doing homage to
the Bishops of Dunkeld instead. They seem to have been
independent of the Bishop of the Isles.

In 1266 Norway ceded the Western Isles to Scotland, as
the outcome of a final struggle. The Lord of Isla at this
time was Angus Mor, son of Donald, son of Reginald, who
died in Isla in 1294. His son Angus Oig patriotically sup-
ported Robert Bruce in his fight for Scotland's freedom, and
led the clansmen of the Isles to victory at Bannockburn.
He is Sir Walter Scott's Lord of the Isles, under the more
poetic name of Ronald. He benefited by Bruce's success,
and got lands of his kinsman, Alexander of Lome, in Jura,
Coll, Tiree, and other islands, and in Duror and Glencoe,
becoming thus the most powerful chief in the West. On his
death in Isla in 1326 he was brought to lona for burial.

About this time Finlay, Abbot elect of lona, went to
William St. Clair, Bishop of Dunkeld (1312-1337) to have his
election confirmed. This is the first evidence of the transfer
of the abbey from the jurisdiction of Trondhjem to that of
Dunkeld.

Angus Oig's son and successor was known as Good John
of Isla, probably because of his liberality to the Church. After
some friction with King David II., John of Isla got a royal
grant of Morvern and the Isles, from Lewis to Colonsay and
Jura, with the formal title of Lord of the Isles, and John of
Lome made over Mull to him. The Macleans and Mac-
kinnons of Mull thus became followers of Macdonald. The
Macleans were led by two brothers, Lachlan, called Lubanach

86 THE STORY OF IONA.

or the Wily, and Hector Reaganach, the Stern. The story
goes that the Lord of the Isles set off from Mull one day for
Ardtornish in his birlinn or yacht, bidding Mackinnon and
the Maclean brothers to follow. But these vassals had an
affray as they were about to embark, in which Mackinnon
was killed by the Macleans. These thereupon rowed hard
after Macdonald, boarded his vessel, and carried him captive
to lona, where they made him swear on the sacred Black
Stones that he would pardon the death of Mackinnon, and
give his daughter's hand and the lands of Duart, in Mull,
to Lachlan, and to Hector, Lochbuie in the same island.
Lachlan's marriage took place in 1366.

Two Papal letters of this time have to do with lona.
Innocent VI. writes on February 3, 1353, to the Bishop of
Argyll, and to the Abbot of Saddell in Kintyre, and the
Prior of Oronsay, of Argyll and Sodor dioceses respectively.
Gillegehanan, son of the late John, a notary of Mull, an
acolyte of Sodor diocese, desires to serve the Lord " in the
monastery of St. Columba of Hy, of the Order of St.
Benedict." He is to be admitted if the number of monks is
incomplete, or as soon as there is a vacancy.

On September 10, 1372, Gregory XI. writes from Avignon
to the Bishop of Argyll to appoint Mactyr, son of judge
John, clerk of the diocese of Sodor, to the parish church of
St. Columba of Hy, vice the late Dominic, son of Kenneth,
rector. This is the first mention of a parish church in lona,
and shows that the island now had a general population who
needed a church and pastor. A much later document, shortly
before the Reformation, names the parsonage of Teampull
Ronain, thus identifying St. Ronan's Chapel, near the
Nunnery, as the old parish church.

The sennachie says of Good John of Isla that he made
donations to Icolmkill and that " he died in his own castle at
Ardtornish, while monks and priests were over his body, and
having received the Body of Christ and been anointed, his
fair body was brought to Icolmkill, and the abbot and monks

THE BENEDICTINES AND THE LORDS OF THE ISLES. 87

and vicars came to meet him, as it was customary to meet
the bodies of the kings of Fingall, and his service and waking
were honourably performed during eight days and eight
nights, and he was laid in the same grave as his father in
Teampull Odhrain, in the year of our Lord 1380."

In 1390 Donald, Good John of Isla's son, who had
succeeded his father as Lord of the Isles, granted Lachlan
Maclean various lands and "the privilege of fragmannach
and armannach, in the island of Hy " — that is, the right to a
tribute of labour hitherto due to the monastery, which doubt-
less received some equivalent instead. Fingon Macfingon or
Mackinnon was Abbot at about this time, for we know that
the chief of Clan Fingon in 1385 was his brother Neil.
Abbot Fingon, "an able, crafty, and eloquent man," not
of good character, was known as the Green Abbot.

In 1411 Donald invaded northern Scotland with the
Islesmen on the pretext of a claim to the Earldom of Ross,
and fought a fierce battle against the Lowland forces at
Harlaw. Hector Maclean, second chief of Duart, who was
Macdonald's leading officer, fell under his banner, and was
borne from the battlefield by the Maclnneses and Mac-
Ilvurichs and buried in lona. This hero, Eachunn Ruadh
nan Cath, or Red Hector of the Battles, is praised for his
virtues as well as for his doughty deeds. The fight at Harlaw
was indecisive, and Donald and his Highlanders had to
retreat again to the safety of the Isles.

The sennachie, in his obituary notice of Lord Donald,
presents to us another side of the warrior's character. " He
was an entertainer of clerics, priests, and monks in his
companionship, and he gave lands in Mull and Isla to the
monastery of I, and every immunity which the monastery
of I had from his ancestors before him. And he made a
covering of gold and silver for the relic of the hand of
Columkill, and he himself took the brotherhood of the order,
having left a lawful and suitable heir in the government of
Innsigal and of Ross, viz., Alastair, son of Donald. He

88 THE STORY OF IONA.

afterwards died in Isla, and his full noble body was interred
on the south side of Teampull Odhrain."

Lord Donald's brother Ranald, progenitor of the Clan-
ranald branch of the Macdonalds, was also buried in Reilig
Odhrain, and their sister Mary, wife of Hector Maclean of
Duart, in the church of the nuns. Ranald's three sons,
Donald, Angus Reabhach, and Dugal, were buried with
their father. Angus is said by the clan historian to have
"taken upon him the brotherhood of the order of Mary in
the church of I."

Lord Donald's son, Alastair or Alexander, succeeded him
as Lord of the Isles in 1428, and a little before this a
younger son, Angus, who had entered the sacred ministry,
rose to be Bishop of the Isles. lona did not own his
episcopal jurisdiction, for in 1431 we find the abbot doing
obeisance to the Bishop of Dunkeld as his ordinary, like his
predecessors in the previous century. Bishop Angus Mac-
donald, nevertheless, willed to be buried in lona Abbey at
his death in 1437. " His noble fair body," says Macvurich
the sennachie, " was interred, with his crosier and episcopal
habit, in the transept on the south side of the great choir,
which he selected for himself when alive."

Bishop Angus's authority was limited to the Scottish
Isles, for Man by this time was firmly in possession of
England, and the diocese was thus divided between the
hostile nations, each of which seems to have chosen bishops.
The Scots were shut out from the cathedral in Man, and
had no other until the end of the century, when lona was
at last adopted for the purpose. Meanwhile the connection
with Trondhjem was at length severed, and Man was
annexed to the English and the Hebrides to the Scottish
Church.

Alexander, like his father, invaded Scotland, but though
the Islesmen reached Inverness the rising proved futile. He
was preparing for another insurrection when he died. It is
not said that he was buried in lona. Bishop Angus and his

J'LATE 21. ST. DKAN S CHAI'EI. : \VKST DOOK.

Page 88.

THE BENEDICTINES AND THE LORDS OF THE ISLES. 89

cousins are the last of whom this is recorded by the sennachie,
and the power of their house was now near to its downfall.
In 1480, John, the son of Alexander, Lord of the Isles and
Earl of Ross, was defeated in a sea-fight of the clans in a bay
called ever since Badh na Fola, Bay of Blood, in the north of
Mull, near Tobermory. His opponent was his own rebellious
son Angus, supported by a faction of the Macdonalds and
Allan Macrory of Moydart. Lord John and his lieutenant,
Hector Odhar Maclean of Duart, were captured ; William
Macleod of Harris, "a renowned and brave warrior," was
killed, and the heir of Macleod of Lewis mortally wounded.
Lord John and his son came to an agreement later, but at
last the turbulence of the clans led King James IV. to declare
the Lordship of the Isles forfeited, in 1493. The old chief,
the last Lord of the Isles, ended his days in Paisley Monastery
after a few years as a pensioner at the court of King James.
His title is now one of those borne by the Prince of Wales.

CHAPTER X.

TO MODERN TIMES.

WE have reached that troublous period at the end of the
fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth centuries, to which
belong existing gravestones and other monuments of the
families of Maclean, Macquarry, Mackinnon, Maclan, Mac-
kenzie, and Macleod. The carved memorials of chiefs and
prelates of these names which lie in lona's holy places have
a close relation with the local events of the time, and it will
be well to continue the story from the preceding chapter.

King James IV. followed up the deprivation of the Lord
of the Isles by coming to the west coast himself, in the same
year, to receive the submission of that chiefs late vassals.
Some came to him at Dunstaffnage, and some at Sir John
Maclan's castle of Mingary, in Ardnamurchan, and he gave
charters to John Maclean of Lochbuie and others. Next
year the King came to Kintyre, where his measures excited
the Macdonalds to rebellion, and Maclan was employed to
bring them to justice. Henceforth Maclan appears as the
King's man. James came to him at Mingary again in 1495
to receive the submissions of more chiefs. Documents show
that next year Hector Odhar resigned the Duart chieftainship
to his son Lachlan.

Meanwhile the Abbot of lona from at least 1489 was
John Mackinnon, whose recumbent monument and broken
cross are in the Cathedral. The prior or assistant superior
in 1492 was Fingon, probably also a Mackinnon. A grave-
stone at Kirkapoll in Tiree bears his name as the donor,
with the date just mentioned.

TO MODERN TIMES. 91

Abbot Mackinnon's term of office was marked by im-
portant events for the monastery. For a long time the
bishop of the Scottish Isles had had no official church, for
the only cathedral was St German's, Peel, in the Isle of
Man, and both island and cathedral were in the hands of
the English. Wherefore, according to the Privy Seal record
of Scotland, in 1498 the Lord of Argyll sent " A letter
to the Pape and ane to the Vice-chancellar for the erection
of Colmkill in the bischoppis sete of the His quhil his
principale kirk in the He of Man be recoverit fra Inglis-
men." Its erection into the bishop's seat is only asked
until the recovery of his principal kirk, for the thought
could not be entertained that the Scots' loss of Man was
more than temporary. And Argyll asks, because now there
is no Lord of the Isles to do so. The Campbells of Loch-
awe had risen to be Earls of Argyll, and were high in
power. This was Archibald, 2nd Earl, who afterwards fell
leading the Scottish vanguard at Flodden.

The petition that lona might be the bishop's cathedral
was evidently granted. It was a natural choice, for the
abbey was the largest and finest church in the Isles, and
stood on Scotland's holiest ground. The bishop at the
time was probably the Robert who is known to have been
in the see in 1492. He seems to have been succeeded by
Abbot John Mackinnon, for the bishop's name appears as
John in 1506, and next year Bishop John, privy councillor
to James IV., gets the offices of Bishop and Abbot united,
so that the Bishop of the Isles shall hold the abbacy of
lona in comntendam and receive its revenues. The poverty
f the diocese was probably the reason for the arrangement.

lona was in a wild neighbourhood for peaceful monks
and nuns at the beginning of the sixteenth century. The
Islesmen broke into insurrection in 1503 to restore Donald
Dubh, grandson of the last Lord of the Isles, to the forfeited
Lordship. Two years later the flame died down, and the
chiefs submitted or were suppressed. Torquil Macleod's

92 THE STORY OF IONA.

stronghold of Stornoway in Lewis was taken by the Earl of
Huntly, and the chief probably fell in the fight, as he is
heard of no more. In 1506 James IV. directs a letter to be
written under his privy seal to Lachlan Maclean of Duart
and nine other " landit men within the His " not to meddle
with any kirks, farms, or profits of John, bishop of Ylis, but
to help the said bishop.

In 1509 Allan Macrory, chief of Clanranald, who had
fought against the Lord of the Isles at Bloody Bay, was tried
and hanged before the King at Blair-Atholl, in punishment
for evil deeds. A Gaelic poem of the time, by Red Finlay
the Bard, in the Dean of Lismore's Book, breaks out against
Allan thus : —

" The one demon of the Gael is dead,
A tale 'tis well to remember,
Fierce ravager of church and cross.
* * * # *

Thou hast, not thine only crime,
Ravaged I and Reilig Odhrain ;
Fiercely didst thou then destroy
Priest's vestments and vessels for the mass.
*****
At the time thou first mad'st war
There was the abbot's horrid corpse,
Besides that other lawless raid
Against Finan in Glengarry.
*****
'Tis no wonder thou didst keep
Far away, Allan, from the gallows."

Here was evidently a sacrilegious marauder from whom
both lona and the church of Kilfinan at the east end of Loch
Lochy suffered. An abbot seems to have lost his life, and
although it is not clear that this was an Abbot of lona, it
looks like it, and as if the attack on the island might have
been made amid the troubles of the Bloody Bay episode, in
which Macrory was a leader of the insurgents. In the year
of his execution, 1509, his son's name appears in a royal
letter of protection to Prioress Agnes, daughter of Donald
Maclean, and the sisters of lona Nunnery. The King orders

~^

< ri»i.*

JiiLliillliillL; '• v -'V.? '-•'•

23. MACKINNON'S CROSS.

Page 92.

TO MODERN TIMES. 93

all men not to annoy or exact from them, but rather protect
them, addressing especially the two Macleans and Ranald
Alanson Macrory. Ranald met the same fate as his father
at Perth four years later, for some unknown reason.

In this year, 1509, Bishop John Mackinnon died. Events
of public importance followed, in which names connected with
lona reappear. Despite his strong hand, James IV. was
popular in the Isles, and in 1513 the clans rallied to his
banner for the English war. The Earl of Argyll (as has been
said above), and also Maclean of Duart and many High-
landers, fell with the King at Flodden. Macleod of Harris
and other Hebrideans, when they got back to the safety of
their islands, took advantage of the national troubles to raise
a fresh insurrection against their new King, James V. The
new chief of Duart, Lachlan Cattanach Maclean, was one of
the ringleaders. Proclaiming Sir Donald of Lochalsh as
Lord of the Isles, they seized Carneburg, in the Treshnishes,
north of lona, and some other royal castles, and drove
Maclan of Ardnamurchan out of Mingary, but were reduced
in 1517 to sue for pardon. Next year Maclan lost his life
in an encounter with some of his enemies. What seems to
be his gravestone will be found described, with the others, at
the end of the book.

Ferquhard, a new Bishop of the Isles, was admitted to the
temporalities of the see and of the annexed abbey of lona in
1530, and two years later, when the monks make a grant of
lands, the deed is signed by Ferquhard, and the prior and
several monks, showing that the arrangement for the bishop
to hold the abbacy was in full force. A document mentions
the appointment, by the Crown, of a monk of the monastery
as chaplain of St. Oran's Chapel in 1542. Next year Prioress
Anna, daughter of Donald Tearlach, died, as her gravestone
in the Nunnery shows. In 1548 Mary Farquhardson of
aclean was prioress.

Donald Monro, Dean of the Isles, visited lona and the
other islands in 1549, and his little book gives us a last

94 THE STORY OF IONA.

glimpse of lona before it became an ecclesiastical wreck
about twelve years later. " Within this ile there is a
monastery of mounckes, and ane uther of nuns, with a
paroche-kirke, and sundrie uther chapells, dotat of auld by
the kings of Scotland, and be Clandonald of the iyles." At
the Reformation in 1561 the Scots Parliament passed its Act
for demolishing all monasteries. The dispersed monks of
lona are said to have carried precious manuscripts and books
to the Scots monastery at Ratisbon and the Scots colleges at
Douay and Rome, but none of these relics have been identified.
The probability is that the good library which the abbey
certainly seems to have possessed perished, as others did
elsewhere, at the hands of the mob.

The Nunnery escaped for about thirteen years longer, and
Marion Maclean appears as prioress in a document of 1567,
while in 1574 the ending of the community seems to be indi-
cated by the grant of its various lands to Hector Maclean
of Duart, by Prioress Mary Nikillean, with consent of the
convent. Mary Nikillean is probably the same person as
Marion Maclean above mentioned.

The old Scottish line of bishops died out soon after this,
without handing on the succession. But Andrew Knox, who
was made Bishop of Argyll and the Isles in the re-establish-
ment of the episcopate (by consecration from England) in
1610-11, brings us again to our subject. When yet but a
titular or unconsecrated bishop, he held an important conven-
tion of nine chiefs of the Highlands and Isles in lona, on
August 24, 1609. At this meeting the stipulations called the
Statutes of Icolmkill were drawn up and subscribed, the chiefs
binding themselves to repair the churches and provide for
a parochial ministry, promote the keeping of Sunday, and
reform some evil customs which were prevalent.

It does not appear that Bishop Andrew Knox lived in
lona. About 1620 he was translated from the Isles to the
Irish see of Raphoe, and his son, Thomas Knox, " a man of
learning and piety," parson of Soroby, in Tiree, and vicar of

TO MODERN TIMES. 95

lona, succeeded him. The new bishop probably continued
to live at Soroby. He died in 1626, and is presumably the
Bishop Knox whose grave the traveller Martin saw in lona
Cathedral about seventy years later.

The documents show that lona at this time belonged to
the Bishop of the Isles, but after the death of Thomas Knox
the Macleans took possession of it. King Charles I. writes
from Whitehall on March 14, 1635, to Sir Lachlan Maclean
of Duart and Morvern, that whereas he and his late brother
had seized "the Yle of Ycolmekill which belongeth to the
Bischop of the Yles for the time, whairof they have been in
peaciable possession these many years bypast," he was to
" restore unto the said Bischope the absolute possession of the
said Yland."

There are two other royal letters about lona in the same
year. The King orders the restoration to lona of two bells
which the first Bishop Knox had carried off to Ireland. And
he writes to the Scots Lords of Exchequer to assign £4.00
sterling to the Bishop of the Isles " to repayre the Cathedrall
Church of Icolmkill." The great political troubles leading
up to the Civil War broke out soon afterwards, and must
have put an end to such projects.

Leslie and Campbell, the two bishops after the Knoxes,
do not seem to have had any recorded relations with lona,
nor yet the three bishops before the Revolution of 1688, who
had their cathedral at Rothesay in the Isle of Bute. In the
above year Sacheverell, Governor of Man, who had come to
Mull to try to recover some of the contents of the Spanish
galleon sunk in Tobermory Bay, paid a visit to lona,
which he has described in a small book. His picture of the
religious observance of the people is touching. "Tho they
have no minister, they constantly assemble in the great
Church on Sundays, where they spend most part of the day
in private Devotions." He describes " the Antient Altar of

Church " as remaining almost entire.

About 1688 lona passed into the possession of the Duke

96 THE STORY OF IONA.

of Argyll. Some of the islanders took the field with the
Maclean clan in 1745, when Prince Charlie's Highland army
was destroyed at Culloden. In the hunting down of the
survivors, King George's redcoats came to lona after a
Maclean who lived at the south end, near Port na Curaich,
and who had been " out." A Maclnnes boy ran and warned
him, and they hid together in a cave until the man could
escape from the island. The same Maclnnes, when an old
man, used to tell of a cave big enough to hold the whole
population of the island, but he would not reveal its where-
abouts. The story is recorded in Lord Archibald Campbell's
book of Argyllshire stories.

lona is a Presbyterian island, but its people will rightly
expect some mention of an English clergyman whose name
is handed down as a household word among them. Legh
Richmond was Rector of Turvey in Bedfordshire from 1805
to his death in 1827, and was perhaps most widely known
in the English religious world as the writer of a famous
tale of piety, The Dairyman's Daughter. In 1820 and again
in 1823 he visited lona, where the regular religious minis-
trations were a quarterly visit from the minister in Mull,
and a sermon read on Sundays by the worthy schoolmaster,
Allan Maclean. Mr. Richmond gathered the people round
him and preached to them the Word of God, sometimes in
English to those who could understand, sometimes to all,
with the schoolmaster interpreting into Gaelic sentence by
sentence. " A rock my pulpit," he says in his diary, " and
heaven my sounding-board ; may the echo resound to their
hearts." By his kindness and goodness he won the love of
all, and the Legh Richmond Library, which was founded
through his exertions, remains as a memorial of him in lona
village. The books continue to be added to, and are now
housed in a good building, the erection of which is due to
the efforts of the Rev. Archibald Macmillan, of lona, and the
generosity of that builder of libraries, Mr Andrew Carnegie.

If heathendom lay within sight from lona's shores in the

1'LATE 24. IN

. IN THE CATHEUKAL, LOOKING SOUTH-EAST. Page

TO MODERN TIMES.

sixth century, by the middle of the nineteenth the power
of steam had brought the heathen Eastern world within
reach. And at this time a son of lona, Charles Chapman
MacArthur, revived the traditions of his birthplace by going
forth as a missionary to distant Ceylon, after preparation at
the English college of the Church Missionary Society. He
was ordained deacon by the Bishop of London in 1857,
before he left, and was raised to the priesthood by his bishop
in Ceylon in 1861. He ministered at the mission stations of ^
Nellore and Jaffna, and wrote books of Christian instruction
for his Tamil flock in their own language. Mr. MacArthur
was afterwards incumbent of a parish in Norfolk and was
able to revisit lona. He died in 1892.

In 1894 Bishop Chinnery-Haldane, of Argyll and the
Isles, consecrated the chapel of the newly-built St. Columba's
House, since called also the House of Retreat, and in the
common parlance of the island the Bishop's House. The
bishop used to visit lona, and the people have the most
friendly recollections of him, while he on his part writes once
from the island in bad weather, " To me lona always seems
a happy and holy place." When he lay dying at the end of
1905 he said humbly to a friend, " I have tried to do
something for dear lona."

CHAPTER XL

TOPOGRAPHY, FROM DtlN-I TO CUL RI EIRINN.

THE very numerous place-names in lona are Gaelic almost
without exception, although a few translations are also in
use, such as the Angels' Hill, the Bay of Martyrs, the White
Sands. The meaning of some of the Gaelic names is quite
uncertain, and some belong to the ecclesiastical vocabulary
of the Columban monks and not to the modern language.
Neither in the following survey of the island nor in the
map is it possible to include more than a selection of the
names.

Ditn-I (Hill of I). Plate 5.— The highest hill in the
island, with a cairn on top. Dun means a hill, or hill-
fortress, and when Adamnan speaks of St. Columba and
a companion sitting one day " on the hill called in Latin
Munitio Magna," this is equivalent to " the great dun " and
may mean Dun-I.

Tobar na h-Aois (Well of the Age) is a triangular pool of
water beside a small crag on the northern brow of Dun-I.
Local tradition says it was believed in of old as a magic well
which could restore lost youth to a woman bathing face and
hands in its waters before sunrise, the proper incantations, no
doubt, being also. necessary. Enchanted wells were a feature
of the ancient heathenism of Scotland and of later witchcraft
and charm superstitions, but it is difficult to see how a
fountain of youth could successfully maintain a reputation.
The moment of sunrise, once sacred to old Celtic sun-
worship, was a potent time for charms.

Dun-I overlooks the north end of the island, where grassy
meadows merge into drifted sands, with a well - scoured

TOPOGRAPHY, FROM DtN-I TO CUL RI EIRINN. 99

knuckle of variegated rock rising up out of them near the
north-east point.

Trdigh Bhan nam Manach (White Strand of the Monks)
lies a little way down the coast of the Sound. (PI. 2.) It
is a stretch of beautiful sand smoothed twice a day by the
tide, its northern limit marked by the rock called Sgeir nam
Mart. For the monk-martyrs whose memory lingers here
see page 75.

Tobar Mhagh Luinge (Well of Magh Lunge or Moylunga,
or might be rendered Shipfield Well). — In the field above
Traigh Bhan ; two springs side by side, joined by a curved
connection, and green with water-cress. The name takes us
back to earliest times, for Magh Lunge was the name of St.
Columba's earliest monastery in Tiree, and it is natural to
suppose that the name was bestowed in both islands at the
same period.

Port na Fraing (Port of France), further down the coast,
is a name as mysterious as the grave of the French king in
Reilig Odhrain, unless Fraing represents the name Rankin,
which is derived from it.

The plain from the hillocks above Port na Fraing to the
mill-stream near the Cathedral contains in its central part the
site of the first monastery, where St. Columba lived and died,
if Dr. Skene's deductions are correct.

Sruth a' Mhuilinn, the Mill-stream, as it is still called
from its ancient use, trickles down the bottom of its deep
bed, from the marsh which was once the mill-pond, past the
north side of the Cathedral to the seashore. Both a water-
mill and hand-mills appear to have been in use in Columba's
time. " The grinding of corn " which Adamnan alludes to as
a regular task of the monks was probably done with querns
or hand-mills, but he also records the erection of a memorial
cross fixed in a millstone, presumably the heavier stone of a
water-mill. He mentions, moreover, a kiln (for drying corn)
and a granary, and Pennant saw by this stream " the ruins of
a kiln, and a granary ; and near it was the mill." Traces of

LANDMARKS OF THE MONASTIikV.

TOPOGRAPHY, FROM DtlN-I TO CUL RI EIRINN. IOI

buildings can still be seen on the high ground by the mill-
stream, west of the road, and these remains, Pennant's earlier
record of them, the Gaelic name of the stream, and the fact
that there is none other that could have turned a mill, com-
bine to make one believe that the buildings mentioned by
Adamnan stood here from the first.

Na Croisean Mora (the great Crosses) is the traditional
though now almost obsolete name for the strip of ground
north of the mill-stream, between the road and the line of
earthworks on the west. The crosses were apparently the
two which Adamnan says were set up to commemorate
Ernan's death (see page 38). The place is in front of the
kiln, as the narrative says.

The position of St. Columba's monastery can be deduced
with great probability from the identification of the mill-
stream and Na Croisean M6ra. Ernan, coming from Hinba,
presumably landed at Port na Muinntir,* south-east of the
present Cathedral, or at any rate at one of the ports south of
the mill-stream. The monastery, whence the abbot came to
meet him, was therefore some way north of their meeting-
place at the kiln by the mill-stream. St. Columba's cell was
somewhere near the house Clachanach, and as Adamnan
describes it as built " in a somewhat higher place " than the
others, the rest of the monastic settlement was on the slope
below, towards the shore (see page 27). "The little hill
overlooking the monastery," from which the Saint pronounced
his last blessing upon it, might be one of the two hillocks
behind Clachanach.

The remains of a line of earthworks are seen between the
mill-stream and Clachanach, on the west side of the road.
There is a great bank of earth mingled with stones, the top
flat and with a parapet on either edge, a broad ditch on
the west of the whole. The structure is best preserved
at the north end, where also there is a three-sided space

Port of the Community ; see the next chapter for its contribution to the
argument.

102 THE STORY OF ION A.

enclosed by mounds and known as Cill-maghobhannain,
said to have been used as an unconsecrated burying place.

There was another section of earthworks extending
further north, behind Clachanach, where the last piece of it
was levelled in 1906 in order to build an addition to the rear
of the house. In digging the bank away, the bones of a
small horse were found carefully buried six feet deep in the
hard stony embankment, and were restored to the earth,
except a tooth. Was the horse thus honourably and labor-
iously interred in some past age the white horse in memory
of whose farewell to his master, Columba, a wayside cross
was set up ?

All this line of earthworks seems to have made up
vallum monastcrii mentioned by Adamnan, outside of which
the cattle were kept. It marked the enclosure of the monks,
who, according to monastic rules, would not go outside of it
without their superior's permission. They may not have
built it all themselves. The remaining section, between the
mill-stream and Clachanach, may be partly natural, or perhaps
a prehistoric bit of fortification. St. Columba founded Derry
Monastery in a fort of his clan, and his missionaries from
lona converted a Pictish fort into a monastery, at Deer, on
the other side of Scotland, so something similar may have
occurred in lona.

lomaire an Achd (Ridge of the Act) is a mound or
terrace, now almost obliterated by the road, a little way
north of Clachanach. It was not part of the enclosing
vallum of the monastery, but a parallel mound within the
enclosure, near the supposed site of the abbot's house, and
overlooking the community buildings. An aged informant,
the crofter of Clachanach, impressed upon the writer that
the name lomaire an Achd, which has sometimes been
misapplied to the earthwork running north from the mill-
stream, belonged to this place, "where the cross is," viz.,
the modern granite cross by the wayside. He added, as
the local tradition, that "they" — presumably the monks —

TOPOGRAPHY, FROM DtlN-I TO CtlL RI EIRINN. IO3

used to meet in council on lomaire an Achd in order to
form decisions on great matters. If so, it would seem to
have been a council hill, moot hill, or dim a' mhoid, such
as Celts and Scandinavians used to build in ancient times.
Perhaps the " convention of the elders " sat there who chose
St. Aidan from their number for the English mission in the
year 635, as described by the Venerable Bede.

The great tabular glacial boulder which has been already
mentioned in connection with the geology of the island, lies
between lomaire an Achd and the Sound, and Skene has
pointed out how well it answers to a stone which some old
Irish documents say was in the refectory of St. Columba's
monastery. One scribe's preface to St. Columba's great
poem Altus Prosator speaks of "the stone that is in the
refectory in Hi ; and the name of that stone is Moel-blatha,
and luck was left on all food that is put thereon." In two
other manuscripts of the preface it is " a certain stone that
was in the monastery, i.e., Blathnat its name, and it still
exists, and upon it division is made in the refectory." The
stone survived the monastery, for the scribes who say " it
still exists" wrote in the eleventh century.* It was so
remarkable that it had a special name, which is considered
to mean "flat stone of division."! The scribes mention the
stone in order to relate how Columba composed a certain
hymn, Adjutor laborantium, while carrying a heavy sack of
oats, taken from off the stone, to the mill. However that
may be, the scribe had in mind a refectory and mill a con-
siderable distance apart. Everything fits the stone which
is still to be seen in lona, near the spot which there are
independent reasons for regarding as the site of the first
monastery. The refectory which enclosed the stone, to
serve as a table or sideboard, was no doubt a wood and
wattle building of the old Irish kind.

* See the critical edition of the Altus in the Irish Liber Hymnorum, H.
Bradshaw Soc., 1897.

t W. M. Hennessy, cited in Skene's Celtic Scotland, II., p. 100, footnote.

IO4 THE STORY OF IONA.

Cladh an Diseart (Burial-ground of the Hermitage) is a
little way south-east of the boulder stone, on the landward
side of a low wet meadow by the seashore — a lonely spot,
whence the curlew flies, with a plaintive cry, at the intruder's
approach. Two rough granite pillars, at present supporting
a piece of farm fence, used to have a third stone across the
top, forming a rude gateway, which Mr. Champneys classes
with early Christian examples in Ireland. This was the
western entrance to a small enclosure, in which Skene and
Drummond excavated, about 1880, and uncovered the found-
ations of an oblong building, twenty-six feet by seventeen,
pointing due east, and with what looks like an altar-place at
the east end. A hermit's cell of about the same size and
shape is still standing (or was so till recently) in North
Rona, off the north of Lewis, and the eastern compartment
contains an altar-stone at the east end. It was not un-
common for a hermitage to consist of a living-room and an
oratory for celebrating the Eucharist. Dr. G. T. Stokes*
gives an instructive instance of daily celebration by an Irish
hermit on the Continent in the eleventh century. " One of
the most celebrated Irish scholars and writers of the Middle
Ages was Marianus Scotus of Maintz. He was an enclosed
anchorite, and tells us himself that he daily said mass stand-
ing on the grave of his predecessor, and with his own grave
open beside him."

The word " disert " is unknown in present-day Gaelic, but
it was a common old Irish term when the Celtic Church
flourished in lona. Irish monasteries often had a disert
near by, consisting of one or more hermits' cells. The
lona disert seems to have been for a solitary anchorite ;
and MacGilladuff (page 77) is called the '" disertach " or
desert-man, in 1164, as if it were the title of one special
person. The earlier hermits of lona mentioned in the Irish
annals — Abbot Cillene Droicteach in the eighth century, and

* Ireland and the Celtic Church, p. 1 80, with ref. to Colgan, A A. SS., p. 205.

PLATE 25. CHOIR OF CATHEDRAL FROM SOUTH TRANSEPT. Page 104.

I'l.ATE 26. CHOIR-AISLE OF CATHEDRAL. Page 104.

TOPOGRAPHY, FROM DUN-I TO CUL RI EIRINN. IO5

the tanist Angus Mac Muircetaigh and Bishop Finghin in
the tenth — may have been tenants of the disert, though
they are not called disertach, and there were other cells in
the island.

On the Celtic hermits, see pages 18 seq. A hermit was
often buried in or beside his cell ; and the Cladh or burial-
ground of the Disert may have originated with the graves
of the hermits. Another name for it is Cladh Iain, St.
John's Cemetery. An ancient gravestone found near here is
in the Cathedral.

Port an Diseart (Landing-place of the Hermitage) is a
straight sandy channel through the rocks in the shore south-
east of the Disert, with which it seems to have been con-
nected by a path across the wet meadow. This may even
have been a communication with the first monastery. The
Port has the present reputation of being a safe landing-place
for boats, even when others are dangerous.

Lochan Mbr (Great Pond) lies on the west of the road
and earthen rampart, and extends towards the southern
slopes of Dun-I. It was originally the monastery mill-pond ;
and though now drained to a bog, the mill-stream still
trickles from it. According to the Statistical Account
(1798), " It is said the edges of this pond were all planted."
Peats have been cut in it, but it never could have supplied
much fuel ; and the islanders had to cross to Mull to cut
their peats, the place of which is now supplied by coal from
Glasgow.

lomaire an Tachair (Ridge of the Causeway). — A road-
way of earth and stones, 220 yards long and 22 feet broad,
built up high above the boggy Lochan, which it crosses in a
north-westerly direction. When the Lochan was a sheet of
water, the causeway must have traversed it like a bridge ;
and there are signs of a continuation of it as a road to the
Hermit's Cell, next to be mentioned. Perhaps it was built
by Abbot Cillene Droicteach (see page 64). The Statistical
Account (1798) gives the name as " lomaire Tachair, which

106 THE STORY OF IONA.

signifies a paved causeway." Dr. Joyce, in Irish Names for
Places, says that tochar is an old term for a raised roadway
across a bog or similar place. The causeway has also an
English name, which is doubtless more recent, the Bishop's
Walk, because (they say in the island) "the bishop" used
to walk out by it to pray at the Hermit's Cell.

The Hermit's Cell (Plate 3).— In the middle of the wild
north-western tract of the island is a small hill with a
precipitous western face, known as Cnoc nam Bradhan,
Hill of the Querns.* At a little distance, the foundation
of an almost circular cell about eighteen feet in greatest
diameter is discernible in the turf and heather. It has
now also stones piled on it. A little more than a century
ago, the Statistical Account described the cell as "the
foundation of a small circular house, upon a reclining
plane. From the door of the house, a walk ascends to a
small hillock, with the remains of a wall upon each side
of the walk, which grows wider to the hillock. There are
evident traces of the walls of the walk taking a circuit
round, and enclosing the hillock." No traces seem now to
remain of this walk from the cell to the hill, though at the
foot of the latter there are remains of a stone " fang " or
sheep-pen.

According to Dr. Skene, the Gaelic name Cobhan Cuil-
dich connected with this place does not mean the Culdee's
Cell, as it is popularly translated, but the Secluded Hollow,
and appertains to the piece of ground, not to the cell. The
Culdees of lona belonged to the end of the island's Celtic
history, and seem to have lived in the monastery. On the
other hand, this cell, a similar one further south-west, near
Dun Bhuirg, and the rectangular one in Cladh an Diseart,
look like the abodes of solitaries, perhaps some of the lona
hermits already mentioned.

A carcair — as the Irish called the beehive hut of a hermit

* A quern is a Highland handmill of two round flat stones.

TOPOGRAPHY, FROM DUN-I TO CtlL RI EIRINN. IO/

— was built by piling flat stones one upon another in a circle,
and projecting inwards, till a dome was formed. There was
a low doorway to crawl through, and sometimes, as at
Elachnave (the ancient Hinba), two cells were joined to-
gether, forming a building of two compartments.

Carcairs were in use also as places of temporary retire-
ment for prayer and contemplation. St. Columba used one
in Hinba, undergoing a three days' trance in it (Chapter IV.),
and in an old Irish poem written in his name he thus ex-
presses his feelings : —

" At times kneeling to beloved heaven

At times at psalm-singing,
At times at work without compulsion,

This would be delightful ;
At times giving food to the poor,

At times in a carcair."

It is quite possible that this cell was one of the Saint's
prayer places. Its position looking out over the ocean
towards Tiree suits Adamnan's description of the place
among the bushes, remote from men and meet for prayer,
where Columba went to pray one day, and beheld (perhaps
in a storm of thunder and lightning) hosts of demons fighting
with darts in the sky, above lona, but at last driven off to
Tiree. I am indebted for this suggestion to Skene's paper
on the Earlier Establishments in lona, in the Proceedings of
the Antiquaries of Scotland.

Tobar na Gaoith Tuaith (Well of the North Wind).— A
spring to the north of Cnoc nam Bradhan and the Hermit's
Cell is known by this name to some of the people, from old
tradition.* Mariners wishing to sail southward used to come
here with their offerings to charm up a wind from the north,
watching for it to ruffle the blue ocean out by distant Coll
as it approached. The ceremony may have been similar to
that of a wind-well in Gigha, where the water was thrown

* Others give this name to the old stone coffin lying by the Cathedral door,
which, like the well, is said to have been used for ceremonies with water to raise
a wind.

108 THE STORY OF IONA.

out towards the point the wind was to come from. lona had
also a Well of the South Wind, whose whereabouts is now
forgotten.

Dun Bhuirg (Hill of the Fort). — A steep eminence, sup-
posed to show traces of fortification on the summit, on the
west side of the island, north of the Machair. The Gaelic
language borrowed the word "burg" from the Vikings
when they were masters of the Isles. A round foundation,
like the Hermit's Cell by Cnoc nam Bradhan, in a reedy
hollow south-east of the Dun, is quite likely to have been
another hermitage.

Gleann an Teampuill (Glen of the Church). See p. 81.
There was an old burial-ground at the head of the glen,
but its traces are no longer visible. The glen is sometimes
called Gleann Culbhuirg, from the farm at its west end.

A' Mhachair (the Plain) is a large level meadow over-
looking the western bay. Adamnan calls it Campulus
Occidentalis, the Western Plain, and speaks of St. Columba's
monks labouring there at the harvest. The bay or Camus,
which appears in part in Plates 4 and 12, has a long
curving shore, doubtless the scene of Adamnan's story of
the crane from Ireland. Poll-eirinn (Pool of Ireland), at
the north end of the Camus, is said to have been a landing-
place for Irish smugglers in more recent times.

Sithean Mbr (Great Fairy-mound), or the Angels' Hill
(PI. n). — This is a smooth grassy hillock on the west side
of the island, just south of the road to the Machair.
Adamnan 1200 years ago wrote down its name in Latin
as Colliculus Angelorum, " little hill of the angels," and in
Gaelic as Cnoc Angel, but Sithean Mor is now its commonest
Gaelic name. In Pennant's time it had on its summit "a
small circle of stones, and a little cairn in the middle," and
it may have been sacred before Christianity in lona.

Pennant also says — " Bishop Pocock informed me, that
the natives were accustomed to bring their horses to this
circle at the feast of St. Michael, and to course round it.

TOPOGRAPHY, FROM DIJN-I TO CtlL RI EIRINN.

I conjecture that this usage originated from the custom of
blessing the horses." As a matter of fact, a general caval-
cade of everybody was one of the ceremonies with which
Michaelmas Day was celebrated throughout the Western
Isles, and the earlier traveller, Martin, describes it in Tiree
and elsewhere. Michael of the Snow-white Steeds appears
with Mary Mother and Kind Columkill, in the old songs
and hymns of the Islesmen, as a great protector by sea
and shore.

Sithean Beag (Little Fairy-mound) is a smaller hillock
resembling the Angels' Hill, on the other side of the road
and nearer the sea.

Cnoc Odhrain (St. Oran's Hill) is in the middle of the
island, on the north side of the central plain and road, with
a crofter's house bearing the same name beside it. See
Chapter IV. for St. Oran.

Cnoc Ciarain (St. Kieran's Hill) is near Sligneach, north
of the road running inland. On St. Kieran, see page 16.

Cnoc Druidean (meaning uncertain). — The low peak in
the middle of the barrier of hills which crosses the island on
the south side of the central plain. Though the Cnoc is but
a gentle acclivity, the view from the summit is striking.

Loch Staonaig. — A small marshy piece of water in the
middle of the southern tract of the island. Staonaig, the
name of this locality, may perhaps best be translated
" inclining ground."

The Spouting Cave (Uamh an t-seididh, Reeves). — A
flooded cavern in the western sea-cliffs, with a " blow-hole "
or cleft in its roof, through which the waves throw a column
of water high into the air at certain states of the tide.
There are also other caves in these cliffs. See Plate 4.

Eilean Maolmhartainn (Maelmartin's Island) is near the
south-west corner of lona. See the map. Maelmartin
(Devotee or Servant of Martin) may have been one of the
ancient Celtic monks of lona. Similar names were given in
honour of various saints, e.g., for St. Columba, Maelcolum or

IIO THE STORY OF IONA.

Malcolm (Servant of Colum). Maol means bald, or tonsured
like a monk or a servant, hence its significance in these
names. Maol is also used for a round bare hilltop, and in
this sense is probably the origin of the name of Mull, whose
bare mountainous coasts present this aspect conspicuously.

Druim Dhiighaill (Dugal's Ridge). — On the east side. A
fine headland overlooking the Sound. The Pigeons' Cave
— a deep cleft in the rock, just to the south — is a
favourite habitation of the Wild Pigeon. The descent to
this picturesque place is shown in Plate 27. Further south
is the Marble Quarry.

The southern end of lona is broken into secluded and
beautiful bays, with green hollows sloping down to them.
The bay nearest the Sound is Port Goirtean lomhair, Bay
of Ivor's Garth or enclosure, and traces of former buildings
are visible above it.

Port na Curaich, the historic Bay of the Coracle (Plates
8 and 9). Here tradition says that Columba and his
twelve stepped out of their Irish boat of wicker and oxhide
on to lona's shore. A high pebble beach has been heaped
up by the Atlantic swell rolling in from the south-west. A
rock islet at the water's edge divides the haven into two, the
eastern half being Port na Curaich proper. Dangerous sea-
rocks flank the bay. Among the variegated stones of the
beach are found the pebbles of translucent green serpentine
known as lona stone, which were an old charm against
drowning. A long grassy mound at the head of the bay
was supposed to contain the historic coracle buried within
it, but when it was dug into a few years ago nothing was
found. It has been suggested that it is one of the "long
barrows " or grave-mounds of the prehistoric Stone Age.

At the western end of the pebble beach the stones are
piled up into cairns, of which Pennant says "a vast tract
near this place was covered with heaps of stones, of unequal
sizes : these, as is said, were the penances of monks."
Reeves pronounces them "probably sepulchral." Perhaps

I'l.ATE 27. THE GOKGE I'.Y THE PIGEONS' CAVE, Page I1O.

TOPOGRAPHY, FROM DtlN-I TO CtJL RI EIRINN. Ill

this was the cemetery of the men who lived at the head
of the next bay, called Port Laraichean from the remains
of their huts.

Garadh Eachainn Oig (Garden of Young Hector), near
the head of Port na Curaich, is said to take its name from
Hector Maclean, one of the Duart family. See the story
of a Maclean, perhaps the same, on page 96. There
are numerous traces of little buildings hereabouts.

Port Laraichean (Bay of Ruins) lies west of Port na
Curaich, beyond the intervening headland. On the grassy
lawn above the shore are the foundations of about six or
seven round stone huts of different sizes, and a larger and
squarer one abutting on a face of rock. These are declared
by Dr. Reeves to be " the traces of by far the oldest build-
ings in the island. The spot is a beautiful recess, enclosed
by high rocks all round, and open only toward the sea,
where the inclination of the ground towards the water is
remedied by an artificial terrace." The hamlet could be
well defended with bows and arrows, but whether it was
the home of Picts or Scots who lived before Columba, or
of later monks or hermits, is unknown.

The little islets and sea-rocks lying to the south here
are numerous and varied. Soa, the largest and most
southerly islet, was probably the monastery seal-farm, and
is still frequented by these creatures. Eilean na h-Aon
Chaorach, Isle of One Sheep, is so called because that is
the capacity of its pasturage.

Port Aoineadh an Taghain and Port Aoineadh nan
Sruth, the last two bays of the south coast, are named
from a Polecat Cliff and Cliff of Tides, as the Gaelic may
be rendered. At the latter bay, the south-western heights
of lona fall away precipitously to a lower piece of coast,
jutting westward into the sea.

Cam Ctil ri Eirinn (Cairn of the Back to Erin) stands
on this south-western height, which is known as Druim an
Aoinidh, Ridge of the Cliff. The tradition that the cairn

112 THE STORY OF IONA.

commemorates and is named from Columba's farewell to
Erin is favoured by the ancient Irish poem, a translation
of which forms the first Appendix to this book. In this
composition Columba claims Cul ri Eirinn as his mystical
name, and even if he was not the actual author of the
poem, it is at any rate an early piece of evidence for the
name.

But, on the other hand, the lona cairn is only one of
several of the same name in the Isles. There is one in
Colonsay, and another on the neck of land in the middle
of Mull near Ben More, where also is a Cam Cul ri Albainn,
Cairn of the Back to Alba (Skene, Celtic Scotland, I., p. 228).
It has been surmised that they marked the boundaries of
the ancient kingdom of Dalriada, for according to Skene,
" the term Alban applied to the country beyond the frontier
of Dalriada, and the term Eire to Dalriada as being a
colony of Scots from Eire." If we suppose the cairns to
date from that remote time when the Picts still held the
Outer Hebrides and down to the middle of Mull, a traveller
would turn his back to Eire (cul ri Eirinn) in sailing from
the Irish territory of Colonsay or lona towards the Outer
Isles, or in crossing the middle neck of Mull northward.
Conversely he would turn his back to Alba or Pictland in
passing south in Mull where the Cul ri Albainn cairn
stands. These conditions belong to a period as early as
Columba, or earlier.

CHAPTER XII.

THE CATHEDRAL AND SURROUNDINGS.

lONA village lies between the Sound and Cnoc M6r, with
the ruins of the Nunnery in its midst, near the slope of
the hill. From Cnoc Mor a line of lesser heights runs
north, terminating near the mill-stream, where a spur of
hill abuts on the west side of the road, opposite Reilig
Odhrain and the Cathedral. The embankment north of
the mill-stream forms an extension of the line of hills on
the south. Reilig Odhrain and the mill and accompany-
ing buildings belonged to the first monastery, but the rest of
it lay further north, whereas the later Celtic monastery was
south of the stream, on the Cathedral site.

St. Mary's Cathedral. — It has been already mentioned
that although the Benedictine monastery was named after
St. Columba, the church was dedicated to St. Mary. It is
a cruciform building, with a massive square central tower
seventy-five feet high. The choir and nave are each sixty-
four feet in length. An architects' description by Messrs.
Buckler, in Bishop Ewing's lona, says that " the remains of
the north transept, the lower half of the tower, the north
wall of the choir and nave, and a fragment on the south
side, are the most ancient portions of the present structure,
and may be assigned to the twelfth century." The builder
has left his name upon it, in the now mutilated inscription,
DONALDUS O'BROLCHAN FECIT HOC OPUS, on the capital
of the south-east pier of the tower (PI. 24, the clustered
pillar on the extreme right). The name is Irish, and the
Donald O'Brolchan who " made this work " can be reason-
ably identified with "Donald O'Brolchan, a prior," whose

H

THE STORY OF IONA.

death is recorded in the Ulster Annals for 1203, about the
time the Benedictines came to lona. Another of the
family, Flaherty O'Brolchan, who had been invited to lona
forty years before (see page 77), had distinguished himself

ECT

.Column's"' .Stteof
Tomb . /* '."Round
r V./ Tourer?

Crosses

GROUND-PLAN OK THI ABBEY.

by building "the great church of Deny," where he was
abbot, and Donald was presumably prior of lona and buill
his church there just before the Columban monks were
ousted by the Benedictines.

A recent investigator, Dr. Honeyman, has come to the
conclusion that this first church had a crypt under th<
chancel, the most conspicuous sign being the arcade of tw(
arches in the north wall of the choir, six feet above th<
present floor. This arcade is thought to have been par

THE CATHEDRAL AND SURROUNDINGS. 115

of a chapel above a stairway down to the crypt. The choir
floor has subsequently been lowered six feet, thus doing
away with the crypt, and on this new level a door has been
made from the choir into the chamber below the arcade,
now called the sacristy, but supposed to have been origin-
ally a lower chapel at the bottom of the crypt stairs. In
PI. 25 the door and part of the earlier arcade above it are seen
through the arches of the south transept and aisle. Perhaps
the crypt was the cause why the church, instead of being
correctly orientated like the older chapel beside it, was
widely deflected to the south-east by its builders, as if to
take advantage of the slope of ground in that direction to
construct the crypt without much excavation. When the
crypt was abolished in enlarging the church, the floors were
accommodated to the slope, and PI. 26 shows how they fall
away in steps to the south and east.

The crypt would be suitable to contain the relic-shrine
of St. Columba, which, although believed to be in Ireland
in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, seems as a matter of
fact to have been translated to and fro as in earlier times.
We do not know what became of the shrine when the church
passed to the Benedictines, but the crypt was eventually
abolished, and the whole church was widened twelve feet
on the south. To quote Messrs. Buckler again, " The east
end and the south wall of the choir, the south transept, the
west front, and the greater part of the south side of the
nave, and the belfry appear to be all of
one date, and to have been built early
in the fourteenth century, on a plan of
larger dimensions than those of the pre-
existent church."

A small consecration cross, in a circle,
is carved on the east wall of the south
transept, where it opens into the choir
aisle (Plate 25, on the right), and there are some less
distinct ones on the outside walls. Consecration crosses

CONSECRATION CKOSS

IN SOUTH TRANSEPT

(REDUCED).

Il6 THE STORY OF IONA.

were carved or painted on the walls of a new church, to
mark places for the bishop to anoint with oil in the
ceremony of consecrating the building. It was usual in
England and Scotland to have twelve crosses inside and
the same number outside, while on the Continent they
only marked them inside the building.

Ferguson points out, in his History of Architecture, that
the lona buildings are exceptional and Continental in
design, and that in the Cathedral "the circular pier-arch
is used with the mouldings of the thirteenth century, and
the pointed arch is placed on a capital of intertwined
dragons, more worthy of a Runic cross or tombstone than
a Gothic edifice. The tower windows are filled with quatr
foil tracery, in a manner very unusual, and a mode of coi
struction is adopted which does not perhaps exist anywher
else in Britain."

The capitals of the tower piers, and of the pillars betwee
the choir and its southern aisle, are carved with foliage am
grotesque monsters, groups of men and strange beasts,
and some religious subjects. On the pillar inscribed with
O'Brolchan's name and the aisle pillars the groups seem
to be the following : — An ox held head and tail by two
men, with a third standing by ; above, a dog chases a hare
— the expulsion from Eden — a man holding a huge beast
by a rope — the Crucifixion — an enthroned figure between
two angels, one with a harp — St. Peter striking off the ear
of Malchus — an angel weighing souls, with a fiend depress-
ing one scale with his claw — dragons and other monsters —
a mounted spearman, followed by a footman with helm
and axe.

There are carved Gothic sedilia, or seats for the celebrant
with his deacon and subdeacon at High Mass, on the south
side of the sanctuary. Sacheverell wrote of his visit in
1688: — "There is one thing yet which is very noble in its
kind, which was the Antient Altar of the Church, one of
the finest pieces of white Marble I ever saw ; it is about

Page 1 1 6.

I'LATE 29. CAPITALS OF AISLE PILLARS.

Pare 1 1 6.

THE CATHEDRAL AND SURROUNDINGS. 117

6 feet long, and 4 broad, curiously vein'd and polish'd, it
is all yet entire, except one Corner, which has been broke
by Accident." By Pennant's time, a century later, most of
it had been broken and carried off by visitors.

Statistical Account (1798): — "The cathedral, or St.
Mary's, is almost entire. It is only within these few years
that part of the east end of the transverse fell, and some
of the head of the cross. Most of the cloisters are still
standing. The Bishop's, which is small, is still standing."
Pennant (1772) gives some additional information about
the Cathedral : — " From the south east corner are two
parallel walls about twelve feet high, and ten feet distant
from each other. At present they are called Dorus Tragh,
or the door to the shore ; are supposed to have been con-
tinued from the cathedral to the sea, to have been roofed,
and to have formed a covered gallery the whole way."

The nave of the Cathedral is in ruins, and the rest stood
roofless until the beginning of the present century, when it
was roofed and repaired and a large rose window was built
in the north transept.

The ruins of the Benedictine monastery adjoin the
Cathedral on the north. The square cloister has the church
nave on its south side, the refectory on the north side, and
on the east it opens into the chapter house. The apartment
above the latter is believed to have been the library. The
kitchen stands north of the refectory, and a kitchen midden
of bones, shells, and other refuse was unearthed between the
two buildings some years ago.

The Abbot's House is the traditional name for the square
foundation in front of the Cathedral, near the rocky hillock
which rises there. The Statistical Account of 1798 includes
among the buildings which have fallen " within the memory
of some people still living — the abbot's house, which is said
to be a very handsome building."

Tigh an Easbuig, the Bishop's House, is the fragment of
ruin just north of the Cathedral and mill-stream. Some of

Il8 THE STORY OF ION A

the pre-Reformation Bishops of the Isles may have lived in
lona, and the later ones, who lived elsewhere, may have used
the house at times, but there are no records. Sacheverell's
account (1688) is quaint. "I therefore quitted the enclosure,
to examine the Palace of the Ancient Bishops. It stood to
the North without the bounds of the Church, and consisted
of a large Hall open to the Roof, a Chamber I suppose he
us'd a Ladder to get into, and under the Chamber a Buttery ;
the Roof is now fall'n in."

In the north-east of the Cathedral enclosure stands a
small oblong church, thirty-three feet by sixteen, with walls
of rude masonry and pointed gables, in a roofless condition.
In its general aspect, simple plan without chancel, and the
smallness of its size, it resembles old stone churches in
Ireland, and seems to belong to the Irish or Celtic Church
period in lona. Pointing, as it does, due east, the difference
of orientation between it and the choir of the Cathedral is
conspicuous. We may suppose that it stood there before
Donald O'Brolchan built the original of the greater building,
and was therefore an earlier church of the monastery. The
foundation of another building about twice as large and
agreeing in orientation lies to the north, near the wall of
the enclosure. It may have been the refectory of the same
period.

There are other traces of this late Celtic monastery. In
front of the Cathedral is the site of the round tower (see pages
72 seq^} A stone coping which was popularly supposed
to belong to a well stands on the spot. It forms no part of
the tower, but Mr. P. MacGregor Chalmers, the architect for
the Cathedral, excavated here in 1908 and found a larger
round foundation, six feet thick, which he conjectured to be
the base of such a tower.

Close at hand is a more ancient relic of the Celtic period.
The traveller Martin, writing at the end of the seventeenth
century, says, " Near to the West end of the Church in a little
Cell lies Columbus his Tomb, but without Inscription." The

':

THE CATHEDRAL AND SURROUNDINGS.

tradition thus recorded belongs to the little ruined chamber
io| feet by 7| attached to the north-west corner of the nave.
It is popularly called St. Columba's Grave, and the two
stone receptacles in it are called his coffin and that of
Diormit, his attendant. In Chapter VII. Skene's supposition
is put forward that this was an oratory containing the shrine
of St. Columba's relics, and perhaps St. Blathmac's. Mr.
Champneys,* like Dr. Skene before him, points out the
resemblance of the little building to the oldest Irish stone
oratories or chapels, especially Labba Molaga, or St. Molaga's
Bed, near Cork, which contains an altar and on the south side
a coffin-like stone cist.

If the monks moved to this site at the beginning of the
inth century, when the Danish attacks began, the little
oratory may be as old as that. From its architecture it
might be much older. The round tower would be at least a
century later, and the other two buildings also later.

There is a little space in front of the oratory, with late
Celtic gravestones. The broken shaft of St. John's Cross
stands outside, and to the south the broken St. Matthew's
Cross and the great Cross of St. Martin. On all these see
the next chapter. There is also a stone coffin near the
Cathedral door.

The Benedictine cloister extends northward from St.
Columba's Tomb, but there was an earlier building here.
Dr. Skene, writing in i875,*f- says that "recent excavations
have laid bare the foundations of what seem to have been
cells," on the west side of the cloister, " and likewise an
enclosure projecting beyond, and, in fact, enclosing the cell
usually considered to be the sepulchre of Saint Columba."
And in 1908 Mr. Chalmers, the architect already mentioned,
traced the foundations of the outer wall" of a range of
buildings west of the cloister. Thus there seems to have

* On Irish Ecclesiastical Architecture, in Architectural Review, August, 1905.
t The Early Establishments at lona, in Proceedings Soc. Antiquaries of
Scotland.

120 THE STORY OF ION A.

been a central community house, having on the east the
small church and the other detached building whose remains
are visible, and on the west the round tower and high crosses,
contiguous to the little oratory of the shrine. There were
outlying chapels also, for St. Mary's, St. Oran's, St. Kenneth's,
St. Ronan's, and Cladh an Diseart are Celtic sites. Such, in
its full development, was the monastery which the Danes
ravaged in the ninth and tenth centuries, St. Margaret
restored in the eleventh, and the fall of the Celtic Church of
Scotland brought to an end after another hundred years.

The rocky hillock between the front of the Cathedral and
the road used to be known as Torr Abb (Abbot's Mount).
The supposition that it is the hill from which St. Columba
gave his farewell blessing to his monastery seems to be
incorrect, and the name must have another origin. Perhaps
it was so called from its proximity to the "Abbot's House"
just east of it. Reeves says of it, " Immediately opposite the
west entrance of the Cathedral is a small rocky eminence
called Torr Abb, Abbot's Tower, on which there formerly
stood a cross." Pennant says, " To the west of the convent
is the abbot's mount, overlooking the whole." Not many
years ago the Cathedral enclosure extended only to the
Abbot's House, so that the boundary wall passed east of
Torr Abb and it was outside the precincts.

Dun nam Manach (Monks' Fort). — The spur of hill
abutting on the west side of the road opposite the Cathedral
enclosure has once been fortified, and the mounds on its
remoter face show where the encircling wall ran. The name
is not current now, but Skene thinks this hill is what Martin
refers to when, after speaking of St. Martin's Cross, he goes
on — "At a little further distance is Dun ni Manich, i.e.,
Monks' Fort, built of Stone and Lime, in form of a bastion,
pretty high. From this Eminence the Monks had a view of
all the Families in the Isle, and at the same time enjoy 'd
the free Air." The stone bastion has become a turf-covered
mound since 200 years ago.

THE CATHEDRAL AND SURROUNDINGS. 121

Near Monks' Fort, in Martin's time, were certain stones
called the Black Stones, not from their colour, which he says
was grey, but because of the black doom of anyone who
broke an oath sworn upon them. " Mack Donald King of
the Isles deliver'd the Rights of their Lands to his Vassals
in the Isles and Continent, with up-lifted hands, and bended
knees on these black Stones." Precisely what and where
these stones were has been much discussed. For an old
instance of their use see page 86.

Tobar a' Cheathain is Dr. Reeves's spelling and Well of
the Showers his translation of the name of a spring which
gushes out of the slope a little way south-east of the
Cathedral enclosure, and is protected by a slab of stone laid
over it. The islanders call it the Bishop's Well in English.
They pronounce the Gaelic name topar a cayan, but its
meaning is uncertain, and may refer to some ancient saint.

St. Mary's Chapel (Caibeal Mhuire). — In the field south-
east of the Cathedral. Its orientation agrees with the old
church beside the Cathedral. Nothing is left but the remains
of the two side walls, and the space between them is filled ,up
with a deep mass of rubbish. Dr. Reeves remarks, "The
interior was used for burial in Pennant's time (iii. p. 254),
and several tombstones have been found in it, but without
any inscription." This ruin appears in the background of
St. Martin's Cross in Plate 35.

Port na Muinntir. — A small cove and sand-beach in the
rocky coast, south-east of the Cathedral and St. Mary's
Chapel and directly below Reilig Odhrain. The traces of
a road have been observed, which led up from it towards the
Cathedral. The upper course of this road would naturally
pass between St. Mary's Chapel and the Well opposite.
Compare what Pennant says of a covered way, page 117.

The name of the Port is of considerable interest.
Muinntir is common Gaelic for "family" or "people," and
it is said that the village used to lie above this point, much
nearer the Cathedral than now. But muinntir is also an old

122 THE STORY OF ION A.

word, and was used by the Celtic Church for a monastic
community or order, and such terms as the muinntir of la, or
community of lona, and muinntir of Columkill, or order of
St. Columba, are found in the Irish annals. In fact, the
word muinntir is believed by scholars to be originally the
old Irish form of monasterium, a monastery. Hence if Port
na Muinntir is merely a comparatively modern name, it
means Port of the People ; but if it is old, as it probably is, it
means Port of the Community or Port of the Monastery, and
indicates that this landing-place was, sometimes at least,
used by the monks instead of the better but more distant
bays further south. The mediaeval road from it to the
Benedictine abbey was probably on the site of a more
ancient road, which continued northward over the mill-stream
where the present road crosses. Ernan was passing along
here from " the port " to the monastery (where it then was)
when he fell dead " in front of the kiln." See page 38.

CHAPTER XIII.

FROM REILIG ODHRAIN TO MARTYRS' BAY.

Reilig Odhrain (St. Oran's Burial-ground). — On St. Oran and
the antiquity of the name of the cemetery see pages 36 and
37. It and Port na Muinntir are so situated as to suggest
that they were at the two southern corners of the primitive
monastery grounds, while the monks lived at the north end
of the enclosure, beyond the mill-stream. As was natural
for soil so sacred, lona became a great place of sepulture,
and the sites and names of some nine ancient burial-grounds
survive, though, with the exception of Reilig Odhrain, they
are small and little is known about them. There is a
prediction which in later times may have increased the
desire of Highlanders that their bones might rest there : —

Seachd bliadhna roimh 'n bhrath
Thig muir thar Eirinn re aon trkth,
'S thar He ghuirm ghlais,
Ach snamhaidh I Choluim chleirich.

Seven years before the Judgement

The sea shall sweep over Erin at one tide,

And over blue-green Isla,

But / of Colum the cleric shall swim.

The Reilig is an almost square plot of ground, sur-
rounded by a stone wall, a little way south-west of the
Cathedral (see PI. 30). St. Oran's Chapel stands in it, near
the north end, and the rest of the enclosure contains the
surviving gravestones of the dead of thirteen hundred years.
It is the only cemetery now in use.

St. Columba probably lay here among his monks for
about two centuries before his remains were removed from

124 THE STORY OF ION A.

the earth for enshrinement. Doubtless this was the
beginning of the fame and privileges of Reilig Odhrain as
a sanctuary for the protection of fugitives, as was the case
with Lindisfarne after the death and burial there of the
holy Cuthbert* Fordun the chronicler, writing in the
fourteenth century, describes " the island of Hy Columkille,
where are two monasteries, the one of monks and the other
of nuns, and also a refuge." The refugium was undoubtedly
the Reilig. Any unfortunate, fleeing from oppression or
from the violence of an angry enemy, could he but gain
the shore of the holy isle and St. Oran's inviolable precincts,
was safe under the shield of the Church until his cause
should be tried and justice done. The right of sanctuary
belonged, indeed, to all consecrated churches and their
graveyards, but it was more potent in proportion to the
sanctity of the place, and Fordun specially names four
sanctuaries in the Isles, of which this is one.

The same chronicler speaks of "the church of St. Oran
in the island of Hy " as an ancient place of royal sepulture,
and this is borne out by other historical records. We have
seen in Chapter VI. that a Pictish and a Northumbrian
king were brought to lona for burial as early as Adamnan's
time. But Aidan the Scot, though consecrated king by St.
Columba in lona, was buried in Kintyre, and the island
does not seem to have been the burial-place of the Dalriadan
rulers. Our earliest and surest records of the royal burials
in lona are found in two old chronicles,-}- which give the
list of Scots kings without any mention of burial-place
until jthey come to Kenneth Mac Alpine, the first king ol
united Scotland, who reigned in the middle of the ninth
century, and was buried, they say, " in the island of lona
where also Fergus, Loarn, and Angus, the three sons o;

* See Bede's Vita Cuthberti, c. 37 (Migne's P.L., vol. 94). Fugitives some
times fled to Columba as a sacred protection during his lifetime.

t Chronicle of the Scots and Picts, compiled about 1187, and Chronicle o
the Picts and Scots, about 1251.

FROM REILIG ODHRAIN TO MARTYRS' BAY. 12$

Ere, were buried." Thenceforward for two centuries these
chronicles say of each king except four, that he was buried
in lona, and there is no reason to disbelieve it. As for
the three sons of Ere, who founded the Dalriadan kingdom
and died before Columba's time, the reference is perhaps
to some translation of their bones to lona in the seventh
or eighth century, for the Irish annals have a record of a
later translation of them from lona to Ireland in 784, to
be laid with their royal ancestors at Teltovvn.

The Early Kings of Scotland.

A.D. 844-860. Kenneth MacAlpine, buried in lona.

860-863. Donald I., buried in lona.

863-877. Constantine I., killed in Fife by Norsemen. "They
found the king's body," says a later chronicler, Fordun, " and
bore it with deep wailing to the island of lona, where it was
enshrined with great honours in his father's bosom."

877-878. Aedh, buried in lona.

878-889. Girig, buried in lona at death, after deposition.

889-900. Donald II., killed by Norsemen at Dunottar, buried in
lona.

900-942. (Constantine II., died a Culdee of St. Andrews, and was
buried there.)

943-954. Malcolm I., buried in lona.

954-963. Indulf, buried in lona, "in the customary tomb of the
kings" (Fordun).

963-967. Duff, buried in lona.

967-971. (Colin, slain by the Britons.)

97x-995- (Kenneth II., burial unrecorded.)

995-997. Constantine III., buried in lona.

997-1005. (Kenneth III., burial unrecorded.)

1005-1034. Malcolm II., buried in lona.

1034-1040. Duncan, killed by Macbeth, buried in lona.

1040-1057. Macbeth, buried in lona.

1057. Lulach the Fatuous, buried in lona.

Then followed Duncan's sons, Malcolm Canmore (died
1093) and Donald (died 1097), wno were not brought to
the sacred island, though Donald's bones were afterwards
translated thither. Dunfermline succeeded lona as the
royal burial-place.

126 THE STORY OF ION A.

The graves of the kings in Reilig Odhrain are unrecog-
nizable; but Dean Monro saw in 1549 "three tombes of
staine formit like little chapels," the northern one inscribed
in Latin " The Tomb of the Kings of Norway," the middle
one " The Tomb of the Kings of Scotland," and the southern
one " The Tomb of the Kings of Ireland." Pennant says : —
" Of these celebrated tombs we could discover nothing more
than certain slight remains, that were built in a ridged form,
and arched within : but the inscriptions were lost. These
are called lomaire nan Righ, or, The ridge of the kings."
The tombs are supposed from this to have been long
round-roofed stone vaults, like some very ancient tombs in
Ireland.

Monro says he reckoned from ancient chronicles that
forty-eight Scots kings were buried in lona — a number that
must be reduced approximately to the list above. He also
reckoned eight kings of Norway and four of Ireland.
Sacheverell says that his guide who showed him the burial-
ground, pointing to a plain stone, said, "This was the
monument of the great Teague, king of Ireland." Niall
Frassach, King of Ireland, and Artgal, King of Connaught,
died as monks in lona in the eighth century (page 65).
These may be of the number referred to by Monro. There
seems to be no evidence for his kings of Norway, though two
powerful sub-kings under Norway, Godred of Man (page 79)
and Reginald of the Isles, were buried in lona.

As Monro says, "This sanctuarey was wont to be the
sepulture of the best men of all the iles, and als of our
kings, as we have said : becaus it was the maist honorable
and ancient place that was in Scotland in thair dayes, as we
reid." After the early kings of Scotland, the Lords of the
Isles, who also bore locally the proud title of king, were
buried in lona, as well as many other Island chieftains.

St. Orans Chapel. Teampull Odhrain — (Plates 21 and
30). — A simple oblong little church, twenty-nine feet by
fifteen. The door is at the west end, and has a round arch

FROM REILIG ODHRAIN TO MARTYRS' BAY. I2/

and rich Norman carving. The chapel as a whole is
possibly older than this Norman doorway, and the name
undoubtedly is. Teampull was Irish for a stone church, as
distinguished from a wooden one, when they began to use
stone for church building more generally than at first. It is
a Celtic Church word.

The roof of St. Oran's is gone. There are only two little
slits of windows — one on either side near the east end. A
mediaeval altar tomb, surmounted by a triple arch, has been
built in the thickness of the south wall. When Pennant saw
it, it contained " a tombstone with a ship and several orna-
ments," probably the monument of one of the Macdonalds of
the Isles.

Near the Reformation we find that a monk of the abbey
exercises the office of chaplain of St. Oran's, doubtless to
celebrate Mass for the dead and perform the other duties of a
cemetery chaplain. In 1542 King James V. presented Sir
John M'Mwylne to the chaplaincy, vacant by the death of
Sir Donald M'Cristyn.

St. Oran's Well is described by Reeves as being " a little
east of the Free Church manse." The building referred to is
now the St. Columba Hotel, and the well does not exist, nor
is its name known, though a spring of water in the position
described is remembered. Reeves also records a tradition
that a St. Brendan's Cross once stood by the well.

Cill Chainnich (Church of Kenneth) was a small ancient
chapel, with a graveyard called Cladh Chainnich, west of
Maclean's Cross, at the foot of the hill. Reeves says, " The
foundations were removed some years ago, and a few tomb-
stones are all that remain to mark the cemetery." Since then
a rude and perhaps very ancient gravestone has been taken
from this spot to be kept in the Cathedral.

On St. Kenneth see page 21, and his visit to St. Columba
it Hinba and mission with him to King Brude. According

the oldest usage of the Celtic Church, such a name as Cill
"hainnich would indicate a church or monastery built by

128 THE STORY OF IONA.

Kenneth himself, for churches were at first named after their
founders, and not, as in somewhat later times, in honour of
departed saints. But although St. Kenneth was a familiar
visitor to lona, it is more reasonable to suppose that the
chapel was named according to the later custom, which
became established before the end of the Celtic period,
than to regard him as its founder, for St. Columba was in
possession of the island.

The Nunnery, like the Benedictine abbey, was founded by
Reginald of the Isles. The ruins are grouped round a cloister
smaller than that of the abbey, and the group originally
extended further south, where the road now passes. Some
basalt is used with the granite in the masonry. The view in
Plate 31 is towards the north-west, across the square of the
cloister to the Sisters' church, lying along the north side of
the cloister and sixty feet in length. The west gable con-
tains a large round-headed window. The east end had a
vaulted roof, the ribs of which were supported by four
columns, and the gable was pierced by a large double window.
All this is in ruins. Three semicircular arches, well seen in
the Plate, open into a north aisle, having at its east end a
little chapel, with a stone staircase in the north wall to com-
municate with some apartment which was above. For the
monuments see the next chapter.

The Nunnery was a priory, i,e.y the superior was only a
prioress, not an abbess. Documents of the sixteenth century
show that the house was dedicated to St. Mary. Some
writers name St. Oran as the patron saint, but that seems to
be a mistake, although possibly the whole establishment bore
one name and the chapel in particular the other, as in the
case of the abbey and the abbey church.

The Nunnery was the women's burial-place. The ancient
monastic sanctuaries of Ireland had commonly a burial-place
for women, and doubtless lona had one before the Nunnery,
but when the latter appeared it was naturally used for the
purpose. Sacheverell describes the Nunnery chapel as " the

FROM REILIG ODHRAIN TO MARTYRS' BAY. 129

Burying place of all the Ladies in this part of Scotland, as
Oran's Chappel is of the Men." At the end of the eighteenth
century women were still buried at the Nunnery, " with few
exceptions."

6V. Ronan's Chapel is a small church about the size of
St. Oran's, a little north of the Nunnery buildings. It
was called Teampull Ronaig or Ronain ; and the designa-
tion " teampull " and the saint's name both link it with
the Celtic Church period, whatever the date of the present
ruined building. See pages 42 and 64 for St. Ronan.

This was the parish church for the few lay people living
in this ecclesiastical island in the Middle Ages. We first
hear of a parish church and rector of lona in a fourteenth-
century document referred to on page 86 ; and this parish
church is identified as St. Ronan's by later records, shortly
before the Reformation.

Straid nam Marbh (Street of the Dead). — This was the
name of the funeral road to Reilig Odhrain from Martyrs'
Bay, where bodies were landed for burial in lona. The
road slanted inland through the field above the bay, where
traces of it have been observed, and turned to the right,
between the Nunnery and Cnoc Mor, through a stone
archway which was remembered by the oldest of the last
generation of islanders. The road passed Maclean's Cross
an the west side, whereas the present road deviates round
the east of the cross. Pennant describes the Street of
the Dead as " a broad paved way, which is continued in
a line from the nunnery to the cathedral : another branches
from it to the Bay of Martyrs : and a third narrower than
:he others points toward the hills."

Port a' Chroisein (Bay of the Little Cross) is a bay,
sandy at low tide, opposite the middle of the village. It
jets its name from a former St. Adamnan's Cross, Crois
Axlhamhnain, which stood by it. Page 6l.

Port Ronain (St. Ronan's Bay) is another memorial of
:he saint of Kingarth to whom the parish church was

I3O THE STORY OF IONA.

dedicated. It is just north of the village boat-pier, where
visitors to lona are landed from the steamer.

Port nam Mairtir (Bay of Martyrs). — Plate 17. Martir
is old Church Irish for the Latin word " martyr," and was
in full use at the period of the first recorded slaughter of
lona monks by the Danes, in the year 806. Angus the
Culdee, who wrote at about this time, has such expressions
as "sluag m6r martir," a great host of martyrs. It has
been suggested on page 67 that this bay is named from
the sixty-eight martyrs of 806, and that their blood stained
its sands. The Irish called it " red martyrdom " to die for
God, and " white martyrdom " to live and endure bravely
for Him ; and we can say of ancient lona what St. Cyprian
said of his suffering Church of Carthage — floribus ejus nee
lilia nee rosae desunt.

This bay has another interest. Pennant speaks of " the
spot called the Bay of Martyrs ; the place where the bodies
of those who were to be interred in this holy ground were
received." An alternative name, Port nam Marbh — i.e., Bay
of the Dead — witnesses to this ancient custom, which has
been observed also in recent times. The dead were laid
on the low grassy mound called Eala, opposite the bay,
before they were carried along the Street of the Dead.
Eala is the Gaelic for a swan ; but this being meaningless
in this case, Dr. Reeves derives the name of the mound from
ealatrom, a bier — otherwise eilitrum, eiliotrom, eleathroin, in
Irish, and eilitriom, eilidriom, in Scottish Gaelic.

A little way south of Martyrs' Bay and Eala is the site oi
an ancient burial-place, Cladh nan Druineach. There is now
no wall, and the place is hardly distinguishable in the fielc
where it is situated, though not many years ago a heap o:
skulls was accidentally unearthed. Pennant describes it, ir
1772, as "an oblong enclosure, bounded by a stone dyke
called Clachnan Druinach, and supposed to have been th(
burial place of the Druids, for bones of various sizes an
found there. I have no doubt (he proceeds) but tha

FROM REILIG ODHRAIN TO MARTYRS' BAY. 131

Druidism was the original religion of this place ; yet I sup-
pose this to have been rather the common cemetery of the
people of the town, which lies almost close to the Bay of
Martyrs."

With regard to the meaning of the name, see what has
been said on page 2. I am told by an authority on such
questions that "druinech" is not derived, directly at least,
from " druidh," a Druid or wise man, but from " druin " and
" glice " (wise or clever), and means a " cunning workman "
of any kind. Hence the idea suggests itself that this name
means the Sculptors' Cemetery, and that they were lona's
famous mediaeval stone carvers. It would be quite in accord
with old Highland custom for a family to have exercised this
craft in successive generations. There were such hereditary
offices among the laity in lona, for the monastery gate was
kept by a family of hereditary doorkeepers or porters, called,
says the old writer Martin, " Clan vie n'oster, from Ostiarii."

CHAPTER XIV.

THE CARVED STONES. CONCLUSION.

THESE notes on the lona carvings are chiefly historical, in
accordance with the general purpose of the book. Such
descriptions of the stones themselves as are given are not
based on personal examination of them by the author. With
the exception of Maclean's Cross, the carvings are collected
in the Cathedral and its precincts, St. Oran's Chapel and
Reilig Odhrain, and the Nunnery. Some have been moved
from one to another of these places, and many others are
not in situ. The greater number may be grouped in the
following classes.

(1) A few unshaped boulders with crosses cut on them.

(2) Flat-lying grave slabs with crosses incised or in relief
on the upper face. The " Irish cross," viz., a Latin cross with
a circle on the arms, is a common form, as it is on the much
more numerous gravestones of the same period at Clon-
macnois in Ireland. One Clonmacnois cross-slab is described
in Petrie and Stokes as "the first perfect example of the
Irish cross — the Latin engrafted on the so-called Greek cross,
or cross within the circle." The Irish stone referred to has
an inscription which is thought to commemorate an abbot
who died in 724, according to the annals. Some of the
similar but uninscribed cross-slabs in lona may be as old
as this, but the few which bear inscriptions are considered
from the style of lettering to be much later, near the end of
the Celtic Church period in the island.

(3) High standing crosses like Irish ones of the early tenth
century. One fine example remains entire. The very early
memorial crosses, such as we read of the monks erecting in

THE CARVED STONES. 133

St. Columba's time, were very probably made of wood, and
they have not survived. There are some names like Na
Croisean Mora indicating where crosses stood.

(4) Mediaeval work posterior to the Celtic Church period.
This includes two high crosses — one of them still intact by
the roadside — and some recumbent effigies, but chiefly flat
grave-slabs. These slabs bear emblems, on a ground of
foliage decoration, sometimes with figures of animals added.
The emblems are such as a warrior's claymore, an island
chief's galley, the Cross ; and on women's tombstones in
the Nunnery, shears, mirror, and comb. Some slabs have
only decorative patterns, and some only a band or border
of decoration. Similar sculpture is found in some other
localities in the Isles and West Highlands, but nowhere
so abundantly as in lona.

IN THE CATHEDRAL.

ABBOT MACKINNON. — (Plate 22). — A recumbent figure
on the north side of the sanctuary. The monument is a fine
piece of rich Gothic carving, in a different style from the
local work, as if by some special artist. As a priest, the
abbot wears the chasuble or mass-vestment. The mitre
on the head is a mark of special honour granted to the
Benedictine abbots of lona in a Papal letter of the year 1247.
The abbots of some important monasteries were allowed to
wear a mitre, like a bishop, although but simple priests,
hence the term " mitred abbot." The figure held in the left
hand a crosier or pastoral staff, the symbolical shepherd's
crook carried by bishops and abbots, but this has been broken
away. The inscription on the edge of the slab is recorded as

1C JACET JOHANNES MACFINGONE ABBAS DE Y QUI OBIIT
ANNO DNI MILLESIMO QUINGENTISIMO . . . CUJUS ANIME
PROPITIETUR ALTISSIMUS DEUS AMEN — Here lies John
Macfingon, abbot of Y, who died in the year of the Lord

ne thousand, five hundred, [and . . . ], on whose soul may

e most high God have mercy. Amen.

134 THE STORY OF ION A.

The inscription shows that, as was often done, Mackinnon
had it carved before his death, leaving a blank for the exact
year to be filled in, which, however, was neglected. He
styles himself merely "abbot," so that as late as 1500
he was not yet a bishop. On the events of his abbacy
and episcopate see pages 90-93. An earlier abbot of the
same family has also been mentioned. The surname is
derived from the personal name Fingon or Finghin, and an
"anchorite and bishop of la" of this name died in 966. The
traditional progenitor of the Mackinnons, Macfingons, or
Clan Fingon was a certain Fingon of the lineage of the
ancient Dalriadan king, Loarn Mor. In the Middle Ages the
Mackinnon Clan followed the house of Lome, and then the
Lord of the Isles when Mull, their home, was ceded to him
in the middle of the fourteenth century. After the depriva-
tion of the Lord of the Isles they attached themselves to the
Macleans of Duart. See further on Mackinnon's Cross below.

ABBOT KENNETH MACKENZIE (PI. 32). — A recumbent
effigy on the south side of the sanctuary, resembling Mac-
kinnon's opposite, but more defaced and without inscription.
He was probably abbot not long before Mackinnon, from
the similarity of their monuments. Martin has a mention
of " Mak Ilikenich his Statue." The chief country of Clan
Kenzie was Kintail, on the mainland coast opposite Skye.
They were vassals of the Lord of the Isles until his fall
in 1493, and afterwards rose to considerable power in the
West Highlands.

MACLEOD OF MACLEOD. — A hollowed matrix as if for
a brass — the island tradition (mentioned by Sacheverell)
says it was silver — in the pavement in the middle of the
sanctuary. It is the outline of a burly knight in plate
armour, not the ruder garb in which other island chiefs
are represented.

Martin has "Mack Leod of Harries." The district of
Harris is the southern part of the island of Lewis in the

THE CARVED STONES.

135

northern Hebrides. Macleod of Harris was also known as
Macleod of Dunvegan, or of Glenelg, from his lands in
Skye and on the mainland. The other branch of Clan
Leod held Lewis proper, the northern part of the island.
William Dubh Macleod of Harris, "a renowned and brave
warrior," was killed in the sea-fight of Bloody Bay in 1480.
This effigy is thought to belong to about that time, from
its resemblance to others at Rodel in Harris. The next
chief, Alastair Crottach, fought at Flodden Field. He died
much later, after rebuilding the priory church at Rodel, and
his tomb is there. A Macleod gravestone in Reilig Odhrain
will be noticed later.

,

rtc

PO

NEIL OF THE ROSS (Niall an Roiss). — An effigy in high
relief on a stone slab, which has been removed from Reilig
Odhrain to the Cathedral, is ascribed
by local tradition to this chief of the
Macleans of the Ross of Mull. He was
grandson of the third chief of Duart, and
flourished at the close of the fifteenth
century. He was given the Ross of Mull
— the peninsula off which lona lies — as
his estate, and became the progenitor of
Sliochd a' chlaidheimh iaruinn, the Race
of the Iron Sword, as the warlike Ross
branch was called.

A tall figure with curly beard, wearing

pointed basinet on the head, a surcoat
reaching to the knee, greaves, the feet in

inted "sollerets" resting on a hound.
Sword in belt, spear in right hand, while
a three-sided shield, with the device of a
galley above a lion rampant, hangs by a

rap round the neck. A small object,
erhaps a horn, hangs on the right side.

MAC IAN OF ARDNAMURCHAN.— A finely carved grave-

136 THE STORY OF IONA.

stone now in the Cathedral,* representing two warriors
under a double canopy, one in plate armour and the other
in long surcoat. Beneath is a galley, and there is rich
ornamentation. An inscription in the border is recorded
as HIC JACET JOHANNES MACCEAIN DOM . . . S DE ARD-
NAMURCHAN ET MARIOTA MA . . EAIN SOROR EJUS
SPONSA MACCOLINI MACDUFFIE DOMINI DE DUNEVIN IN
COLONSE HANC LAPIDEM EMIT SUO FRATRI (Here lies
John Maclan, Lord of Ardnamurchan : and Mariota Maclan
his sister, the wife of Maccolin Macduffie Lord of Dunevin
in Colonsay, bought this stone for her brother). Which of
the two figures is Maclan, and who is the other, does m
appear. The surcoat was specially characteristic of the
West Coast ; plate armour of the Lowlands, such as the
other knight wears, was no doubt obtained at a greate
price. Perhaps the figures commemorate the donor's
husband and brother, though " Hie jacet " is only said of
the latter. A panel on the slab resembles the design or
the stone of the Four Priors, date 1500, in the Reilig. This
indication of the period of the Maclan stone, and its inscrij
tion, suit Sir John Maclan of Ardnamurchan, who supportec
the King's cause in the troubles in the Isles from 1
onwards. James IV. was twice at his castle of Mingary,
and granted him lands, but he fell by the hand of his foe
in 1518. The Maclans were an offshoot of the Macdonaldj

A BOULDER carved with an artistic Irish cross, founc
near Cladh an Diseart, and popularly called St. Columba's
Pillow. Its length is 20 inches. Plate 33.

A BOULDER tapering towards one end, incised with a
linear Latin cross with the ends crossed like a T. The
figure is much simpler and more ancient-looking than the

* Martin says " There is a heap of Stones without the Church, under which
Mackean of Ardminurchin lies buried."

v i?1
%

'

FROM CILL CHAINNICH.

FKO.M NEAR CLADH AN DISEAKT.

PLATE 33. CARVED BOULDERS.

Page 136.

THE CARVED STONES. 137

preceding. It comes from Cill Chainnich. Plate 33. Both
of these stones are probably gravestones.

MACKINNON'S CROSS (Plate 23).— The broken shaft of a
high standing cross, formerly preserved in St. Oran's Chapel,
but now in the Cathedral. The site where it originally stood
is unknown. On the front, a galley of twenty oars, with mast
and flagstaff, is carved at the foot ; above this a panel con-
tains the inscription HEC EST CRUX LACCLANNI MEIC
FINGONE ET EJUS FILII JOHANNIS ABBATIS DE HY FACTA
ANNO DOMINI MCCCC°LXXX°IX°. (This is the cross of Lachlan
MacFingon, and his son John, abbot of Hy, made in the year
of the Lord 1489.) The reverse side of the cross is carved
with foliage ornament springing from a griffin's tail. Abbot
Mackinnon has been already mentioned. His father Lachlan,
whose name is on the cross, was the chief of the clan. He
was known as Lachlan the Barterer (Lachunn na h-Iomlaid),
because he exchanged the land of Gribune, on the west coast
of Mull above lona, for the Mishnish district in the north.

Among other pieces of carving collected in the Cathedral
is a cross shaft with a dragon and interlaced ornament on
one side, and on the other a defaced representation of a ship
with six or seven men standing in it, and a great dragon
monster above. The style of carving has been described
by Mr W. G. Collingwood (see the Bibliography) as the
"hacked" work of the Viking-age crosses in the Isle of Man,
extremely unlike the native sculpture of lona. It will be
remembered that King Godred of Man was buried in lona.

IN THE CATHEDRAL PRECINCTS.

CELTIC GRAVESTONES. — In a pavement in front of the
oratory called St. Columba's Tomb, four flat-lying slabs with
incised Irish crosses can be distinguished. The two towards
the north have very indistinct inscriptions, which have been
conjecturally read as follows. On the eastern one, OR DON
GILIAN, Pray for Gilian ; and on the other a double epitaph,

138 THE STORY OF IONA.

OROIT AR ANMIN FLAIND and OR AR ANMIN CAIND — Pray for

the soul of Fland, Pray for the soul of Cand. These are old
Irish names, the language is Gaelic, the lettering is described
as " Hiberno-Saxon late minuscules " (Allen and Anderson),
the time perhaps the twelfth century, with the close of which
the Celtic tenure of lona ended. Many of the stones at
Clonmacnois have the same kind of inscriptions, and always
in the vernacular Gaelic, not in Latin, but old vernacular
inscriptions are very rare in Scotland.

ST. JOHN'S CROSS (Crois E6in). — Plates 18 and 34.— A
broken cross-shaft about six feet high, rising from a box-like
pedestal of slabs of stone, just west of "St. Columba's
Tomb" and the graves mentioned above. The flat shaft
carved with bosses and serpents, scrolls and interlacing
knots, in a manner described by Mr Anderson as "
elaborate that no written description can convey any idea
what the ornament is like." The writer adds that it " mus
have been one of the most beautiful specimens of Celtic art
The sculpture is now much defaced. Zoomorphic designs
of serpents and other animals are characteristic of old
Irish and Scottish art, and the "escaping spiral" and
"trumpet" scroll ornament were inherited from the pre-
Christian Celts of the British Isles. Christian Celtic
decoration reached its height "in the Irish and Hiberno-
Saxon illuminated MSS. of the eighth century" and "was
afterwards applied to sculptured stone-work" (Allen, Celtic
Art}. Reasons for assigning the Celtic high crosses of lona
to the beginning of the tenth century are stated on page 73.
It is, however, St. Martin's Cross with its figure-groups
which is specially like the Irish ones of that period, and
St. John's and St. Matthew's may be a little older.

ST. MATTHEW'S CROSS. — The remnant of a sandstone
cross-shaft on a red granite base, in front of the Cathedral.
The shaft is five feet high, and has the Temptation of Adam
and Eve represented on one side, in the same conventional

PLATE 34. GRAVESTONES AND ST. JOHN'S CROSS.

THE CARVED STONES. 139

form as on a cross at Kells, in Ireland. At the base of the
shaft, a diagonal pattern with serpents' heads in it ; on the
other side interlaced work. Graham, who calls this St. John's
Cross, says the head and arms are buried in the earth beside it.

ST. MARTIN'S CROSS (Crois Mhartuinn). — Plate 35 and
Frontispiece. — This is pre-eminently the Great Cross of
lona — of massive red granite grey with age, rising sixteen
feet and eight inches from the ground. On the front or west
side the central subject is the Blessed Virgin Mary and her
Child, surrounded by four angels. Beasts are carved on the
arms of the cross ; on the shaft, Daniel in the lions' den, in a
conventional design known to antiquaries ; groups of human
figures, one with a harp ; below, bosses and serpents. The
back of the cross has beasts carved on the top, the rest
bosses and serpents. The cross is called St. Martin's from
its traditional Gaelic name. St. Martin, Bishop of Tours,
was a friend of the British St. Ninian, and died about the
time St. Patrick was carried captive to Ireland. He was
highly venerated in the Irish and Scottish Churches. We
learn from Adamnan that his name
was in the prayers of the liturgy
used in lona by St. Columba.

IN ST. ORAN'S CHAPEL.

No. i on north side — a fragment.

2. A flat -lying sandstone slab,
four feet six inches long. Within
a margin, a cross of two parallel
bands, interlaced at the intersection
of the cross, and forming semicircular
endings to its arms. At Clonmac-
nois there are a number of varia-
tions of this design, dating from
the beginning of the ninth century onward, on the evidence
of their inscriptions.

A CELTIC CROSS-SLAB.

140 THE STORY OF ION A.

3. A mediaeval grave-slab, inscribed at the top Hie JACET
CORPUS . . . FILII DOMINI ANGUSII MAC DOMNILI DE ILA

(Here lies the body of , the son of Lord Angus

Macdonald of Isla). Below is a galley with flag at prow,
and design of foliage and nondescript animals. There were
two Lord Angus Macdonalds of Isla. Angus Mor, grand-
son of the founder of the Benedictines in lona, died in
1294. His son, Angus Oig (page 85) died in 1326. The
gravestone seems to be that of an unknown son of one
or the other of these. The inscription reads as if the
person buried was not himself Lord of Isla. This is
against the supposition that the obliterated name was
Angusii, and the person Angus Oig, son of Angus Me
The space, moreover, is too short for Angusii, as Drummor
points out ; but his suggestion of Joanis — viz., Good Jol
of Isla, Angus Oig's son — is open to the same objectk
that the inscription is not for a Lord of Isla, but for tl
son of one.

4. PRIOR MACGILLRESCOL. — A grave-slab with effigy
one of the Benedictine priors of the monastery in hi
sacerdotal vestments, showing an embroidered amice rounc
the neck, the chasuble, the maniple on the wrist, and an
embroidered " apparel " at the bottom of the long alb. The
figure stands in an ornamental niche ; and at the top of
the stone is a chalice guarded by a terrible griffin, and the
inscription HIC JACET FRATER CRISTI . . . MAC GILLRESCOL
QUONDAM PRIOR DE Y CUJUS ANIME PROPITIETUR DEUS
(Here lies Brother Christian?] Macgillrescol, former prior
of Y, on whose soul may God have mercy). When Graham
wrote, in 1850, this stone was "lying in the burying-ground
of Kilviceon in Mull," having been taken from lona for a
grave there.

5. PAL AN SPORAIN. — A slab with ornamental border,
and a row of round ornaments down the middle. Graham
wrote :— " In the north-east corner of St. Oran's Chapel
is the tomb of Pol an Sporain, i.e., Paul of the Bag. He

I'LATE 35. ST. MARTINS CROSS: WEST FACE.

Page 140.

THE CARVED STONES.

141

was the son of an Earl of Argyll and High Treasurer of
Scotland. He is said to be the only Campbell interred
in this island." The round objects carved on the slab " are
supposed to represent silver coin then in circulation."
Martin speaks of "the tomb of Paul Sporran/' not as in
the chapel, but near the graves of the Macleans outside.
The stone must have been moved into the chapel.

6. MACLEAN OF GRULINE (Plate 36). — An ornamented
slab. A sword and attached belt ; two inscription panels
beside the hilt ; at the head of the slab is a square panel with
ornamental cruciform design, as on the stone of the Four
Priors (Ridge of the Chiefs, 14). Hence it probably belongs
to about 1500. Tradition assigns it to a Maclean of Gruline,
a place at the head of Loch nan Ceall in Mull, where there
was a branch of the Lochbuie clan.

7. Ornamented slab.

8. MACQUARRIE OF ULVA (local
tradition). A late fifteenth or early
sixteenth century effigy, carved in
high relief. A warrior in basinet, mail
tippet, quilted surcoat, greaves, and
pointed sollerets on the feet ; a spear
in the gauntleted hand, and sword in
belt. The shield is emblazoned with
a galley above two lion - like beasts.
Hounds and a deer and other animals
decorate the slab.

The Macquarries or Clan Guarie
were a small tribe who held the island
of Ulva and adjacent lands in Mull,
to the north of lona. They and the
Mackinnons claimed descent from the
brothers Fingon and Guarie, of the
lineage of Loarn Mor, the son of Ere.
The chief John Macquarrie died in 1493. His son Dunslaff
succeeded, and after the break-up of the Kingdom of the

142

THE STORY OF IONA.

Isles in 1493, he figures as a follower of Maclean of Duart in
the troublous events of the period. He is last named in
1517, and in 1553 Ulva passed to the Duart chief.
9-12 are ornamented slabs, rather defaced.

At the east end of the chapel is placed a slab divided
into two longitudinal panels, each of which has contained
two long incised crosses of the Celtic type. Most of the
quarter containing one of the crosses is broken away.

On the south side of the chapel are various fragments of
what has been a Celtic high cross of great size, seven feet
across the arms, carved out of slate.

Also the " Cross of Oran," or " Stone of Oran," as it is
popularly called, looking like the lower part, or perhaps tl
whole, of the shaft of a standing cross, now remounted
a rough pedestal. It is probably at least three centurh
posterior to St. Oran's time.

IN REILIG ODHRAIN.
Most of the older gravestones are arranged in two paralle
rows near the middle of the cemetery. The row on the
west is known as the Ridge of the Kings, and the other as the
Ridge of the Chiefs. The position of some of the stones has
been changed.

RIDGE OF THE KINGS.
From South to North.

1. The first in the row is a plain stone.

2. Slab with Irish cross, and the inscription OR AR

ANMIN EOGAIN, Pray
for the soul of Ewan.
See the accompanying
cut. This stone is like
those in front of " St.
Columba's Tomb."
Another stone of the same kind used to lie near this,
and later at the north end of the Ridge of the Chiefs, but

.MACLEAN OF GRULINE.

,

l^^^^^b-^ .^h. A _i_ •"* . s.

.;•

THE 1'KIEST AT THE ALTAK.

sg~&Ji ^sTgg-nnrcrdiB

^s^^^j^^H^gBat

CROSS, SWORD, AND CASKET.

PLATE 36. GRAVESTONES IN ST. ORAN*S CHAl'EL AND THK REII.IG. t'<*gt 142.

»-«-»

wi

:

THE CARVED STONES. 143

is now at Inverary Castle. It is inscribed with an epitaph
preceded by a small cross, thus : + OR DO MAEL FATARIC
(Pray for Maelpatrick), and is quite possibly the gravestone
of the good Irish bishop, Maelpatrick O'Banain, who died in
lona in 1174.

3. BISHOP AODH CAMA-CHASACH. — A bishop or abbot,
rudely delineated in alb, dalmatic, chasuble, and mitre, with
pastoral staff. He stands under a canopy, with his right
hand raised in benediction. Graham says — " It bears no
inscription, but tradition gives it the name of Easpuig Aoidh
Camo-chasach, Bishop Hugh of the Crooked Legs."

4-7. Ornamented slabs.

8. Ornamented slab, with figures at the bottom which
some have described as resembling a Celtic ecclesiastical bell
and two nails, but the foliage pattern shows it is not of
Celtic date. The objects represented may be the pillar and
nails emblematic of the Passion.

9. A rudely carved figure of a bishop or abbot in the
attitude of number 3. Below the figure are two small hooded
monks, greeting one another with a clasp of the hand.

10. A panel for inscription near the top of the slab, with
a chalice (probably the sign of a priest's grave) and a smaller
panel, or book, just below.

11. A great sword, while at the top of the slab a priest is
lebrating Mass — " lifting up holy hands " — at an altar

covered with a cloth and having on it a chalice and a cross
ith circle on the arms. A deacon or server assists the

priest. The stone suggests a warrior who has exchanged
e sword for the cowl. Plate 36.

12. REGINALD, LORD OF THE ISLES? (Plate 36).— The
pering form of the slab is said to be a mark of early date.

A great sword is depicted, and beside it apparently the
sheath, seen edgewise. On the left of the hilt is a small
Latin cross of interlaced work, and at the foot of the stone a
casket or strong-box, which is understood to be an emblem
f the builder of a church. This is probably the gravestone

144 THE STORY OF IONA.

of the founder of the Benedictine abbey and nunnery, who is
said by the historian of his clan to have received a cross from
Jerusalem, and to have been buried in Reilig Odhrain on his
death in 1207. See page 84.

13. A foliated cross in a square panel at the top, and a
small sword on the right side of the slab.

14. Ornamented slab.

15. Circular design in centre.

1 6. Defaced slab.

17. Foliage scrollwork and sword.

1 8. Foliage scrollwork.

19. A defaced plain stone.

20. Defaced fragment showing part of a cross.

21. Ornamented stone with floriated cross.

22. Grave of a supposed KING OF FRANCE. — A rough
oblong block of red granite, with an Irish cross cut on
it, lying outside the rail enclosing the preceding stones.
Graham describes the stone, and adds, " According to tradi-
tion a French king is interred here after having abdicated
the French throne. His name, however, is not handed
down." Pennant says, " About seventy feet south of the
chapel lies a nameless king of France."

It is not likely that any early French king either died in
lona or was taken thither for burial, although one was sent
to Ireland and shut up in Slane Monastery for a time in the
seventh century, and there was occasional communication
between lona and Gaul — witness Columba and the sailors at
Kintyre, and Adamnan and his guest, Bishop Arculf.

RIDGE OF THE CHIEFS.
From South to North.

1. The first slab has a sword carved on it.

2. Cross ; galley and sword on right side of the stone.

3. Ornamented.

4. The slab (see Plate 37) has at the top the inscription

MACLEOD.

THE N11JEK.

AILEAN NAN SOI'.

1'LATE 37. GRAVESTONES IN REILIG ODHKAIN.

THE CARVED STONES. 145

HIC JACET . . . MCLEOID (Here lies . . . Macleod) and the
figure of a galley. In the middle of the ornamented surface
of the slab is a small figure of the chief, in helmet and the
usual long surcoat, armed with spear, sword, and small
three-sided shield. Drummond says : — " It has always been
asserted that he is dressed in the philabeg, but, on examin-
ing it closely, I found the dress the same as that in which
the chiefs are usually represented."

The ornamentation is like Eoghan a' Chinn Bhig (No. 18
below). If this indicates a contemporary of his, and assum-
ing that he is a chief of the clan, the time suits John
Macleod of Lewis, who died about 1532, after an un-
eventful career. It is not Macleod of Harris of the same
time, for his grave is at Rodel. Torquil, the father of
John of Lewis, had fallen at the beginning of the century,
in the storming of his castle of Stornoway by the King's
forces.

5. "THE RIDER" (Plate 37), a mounted knight with
spear at charge, at the top of the slab, with a kneeling
figure and inscription panel below, and a sword on the
lower half of the stone. The general form of the slab and
the fashion of the sword are said to indicate an early date,
and hence the Rider — probably a Maclean — is thought to
belong to the fourteenth century.

Maclean is Mac Gilean, from the traditional ancestor,
Gilean na Tuaighe (Gilean of the Battle-axe), a Mull hero
of the early thirteenth century. The second chief, Maeliosa,
is said to have fought against the Norse at Largs, in 1263,
and the third, Malcolm, against the English at Bannockburn,
in 1314, in the Highland brigade of the Lord of the Isles.
This brings us into the century to which this gravestone
is supposed to belong. Ian Dubh Maclean held Mull in
the time of Robert II., in whose reign he died. On his
sons Lachlan and Hector, see page 86. With these
brothers, the clan divides into two. The body of Red
Hector of the Battles, Lachlan's son, and second chief of

K

146

THE STORY OF IONA.

Duart, was brought to lona for burial, from Harlaw field,
in 1411. See page 87.

6. An ornamented slab.

7. Ornamented ; animals at top.

8. AILEAN NAN SOP (Allan of the Straw) (Plate 37).— A
richly ornamented stone, with a galley near the top, assigned
by local tradition to Ailean nan Sop, who was so called
from the combustibles with which he set fire to houses
in his raids. He was Allan Maclean, a younger son of
Lachlan Cattanach of Duart. His brother, Hector Mor,
succeeded to the chieftainship about 1527; and Allan, for
lack of an inheritance, took to the sea as a pirate. He
finally seized Lehire or Lether, since called Torloisk, on
that part of the Mull coast which is hidden from lona by

the islands of Gometra and Ulva.
There he settled down, and became
an important leader in the various
doings in the Isles till his death
about 1551.

9. Slab with foliage ornament,
square panel at top.

10. Slab with foliated cross, a short
sword on the right.

11. Obliterated design.

12. Square panel at top, sword
down the centre of the slab.

13. MACLEAN OF DUART (local
tradition). — An effigy, in high relief
of a chief with a square-ended beard
wearing the long surcoat of the
western Highlands, a pointed 01
ridged basinet, and greaves, the feel
on a hound. The sword is in th<
belt, spear in right hand, and or

the left arm a three-cornered shield with the device of «'
dragon above a tower. The period is the late fifteenth o

EOGHAN A CHINN BHIG.

iif.'

tef

PRIORICSS ANNA.

I'LATE 38. GRAVESTONES IN THE REILIG AND NUNNERY.

THE CARVED STONES. 147

early sixteenth century. The chiefs of the time were Hector
Odhar (pages 89 seq.} ; his son Lachlan, who fell at Flodden
(pages 90 - 93) ; and Lachlan Cattanach (page 93). The
second of these seems to have had his name suppressed and
his father brought down to Flodden by the old genealogists,
as Mr J. P. Maclean shows in his book. His succession to
the chieftainship in 1496 is shown in Innes's Origines
Parochiales. His body might have been brought from
Flodden to lona, as his ancestor's was from Harlaw.
Lachlan Cattanach, who came next, was killed in Edinburgh,
about 1527, by the brother of his early wife, Elizabeth
Campbell, whom he had tried to drown on the Lady's Rock,
off Duart Castle.

Entering the Sound of Mull from the east on the way to
lona, one passes the massive ruins of Duart Castle on the
left, and soon afterwards Ardtornish on the right, the ancient
stronghold of the Lords of the Isles.

14. THE FOUR PRIORS (Plate 38). — A beautiful but much
defaced slab in four ornamental square panels, with a dog
chasing a hare in a narrow space at the top, suggesting the
favourite pastime of Chaucer's monk. In the border is
inscribed : HIC JACENT QUATUOR PRIORES DE Y EX UNA
NATIONS V JOHANNES HUGONIUS PATRICIUS IN DECRETIS
OLIM BACALARIUS ET ALTER HUGONIUS QUI OBIIT ANNO
DOMINI MILLESIMO QUINGENTISIMO (Here lie four Priors
of Y, of one nation, namely — John, Hugh, Patrick (formerly
Bachelor of Decrees), and another Hugh, who died in the year
of the Lord 15 — ). A blank after the date is thought to show
that the exact year of the death of the last of the four is
not filled in. Patrick's degree of Bachelor of Decrees is a
distinction possessed by some other clergymen named in
documents of the time.

1 5. MACLEAN OF LOCHBUIE (local tradition).— An effigy
of a chief, seemingly in the act of buckling on his sword,
wearing pointed basinet, mail tippet, and quilted surcoat, of
the period about 1500, before or after.

148

THE STORY OF IONA.

Hector, fourth chief of Lochbuie, died before 1493, and
was succeeded by his son John Oig, who became a great
chief. His long life came to an end in an affray with the
Duart clan in Mull about 1538. Another gravestone, number
1 8 below, is attributed to his son Ewan, who was killed with
him.

Loch Buidhe is a sea-loch running into the south coast of
Mull and overhung by fine hills. At the head of the loch
stands the crumbling tower of Moy Castle, the old fortress of
the Lochbuie chieftains, who bore as a second title the name
of Baron of Moy. The modern house and the little Church
of St. Kilda are close by. Lochbuie hall is hung with swords
and targets borne by clansmen in the Stewart cause, in which
the Maclaines (as the Lochbuie family now spell their name)
suffered not a little. A regiment oi
Macleans was cut to pieces, with the
rest of Prince Charlie's Highland
army, at Culloden, and an instance
has already been given of how the
survivors were hunted down even tc
lona.

1 6. MACLEAN OF COLL (traditional)
— An effigy assigned by antiquaries t<
the late fifteenth century. The figur<
is clad like the preceding, and grasp
his sword and hilt as if about t<
draw. A little angel appears abov>
either shoulder ; there is a griffir
with other ornamentation on th
slab ; and the feet rest on a dog.

The hills of the island of Col
north-east of Tiree, can be seen fror

lona. The first Maclean chief of th
. . , r iU ., .

island was John, a son of the tnir

chief of Duart and grandson of Red Hector of th
Battles. He was known as John Garbh from his giganti

THE CARVED STONES. 149

stature and great strength, and is said to have forced
Alexander, Lord of the Isles, to give him Coll and other
lands, for fear of his life. His son John Abrach was
killed in maintaining possession of Lochiel in Lochaber,
which was part of the grant A third John, son of the
preceding, was chief in 1493. Dr Johnson and Boswell were
entertained in Coll by the chief of their day, and speak
affectionately of his son, "young Coll," who was drowned
soon after their visit.

17. A slab with a galley on it, and a stag hunted by
dogs.

1 8. EOGHAN A' CHINN BHIG (Ewan of the Little
ead). (Plate 38.) — At the top of the slab is the peaceful

scene of an unarmed horseman pacing along, with a hound
at his horse's heels and a harper in the background.
There has been an inscription above. The foliage ornament
below is developed from the tails of two pairs of nondescript
beasts.

The island tradition ascribes this stone to a famous Ewan
aclean, a son of John of Lochbuie, who fell, with his father
and brother, in a savage clan fight in Mull, about 1538. "It
was a common belief in the olden time that this personage
always appeared when a member of his family was about to
die. A little over fifty years ago a native of the island
declared that he saw loin pass him at MacLean's Cross
on his black horse, with his little head under his arm."
(Macmillan).

19. DR. JOHN BETON. — A gravestone with a coat of
arms in the upper part. In the margin of the slab is
inscribed HIC JACET JOHANNES BETONUS MACLENORUM
FAMILIAE MEDICUS QUI MORTUUS EST 19 NOVEMBRIS
1657 AET 63. DONALDUS BETONUS FECIT 1674 (Here lies

John Beton, physician to the Maclean family, who died on
the I9th of November, 1657, aged 63. Donald Beton made
this, 1674). And below the coat of arms are three lines of
erse : ECCE CADIT JACULO VICTRICIS MORTIS INIQUAE

ISO THE STORY OF IONA.

— QUI TOTIES ALIOS SOLVERAT IPSE MALIS — SOLI DEO

GLORIA (Lo, he falleth by the dart of victorious unrighteous
death — who himself so oft loosed others from their ills —
to God alone be glory).

Skene, in his introduction to the Book of the Dean of
Lismore, says — "The Betons, or, as their name was in
Gaelic, Macbheatha, who were hereditary physicians in Isla
and Mull, and who were also sennachies of the MacLeans,
were of Irish descent, being O'Neills." A writer on the
Clan MacLean says that at one time the Betons possessed
Pennycross, on Carsaig Bay in the south of Mull, as a
reward from Maclean of Duart. The chief was wounded
by a poisoned arrow, and his life was despaired of, but
he was healed by the physician's skill.

There is a fragment of a cross at the end of the Ridge
of the Chiefs, outside the rail enclosing their graves.

Clach Brath, between the end of the Ridge and the
Chapel, is "a broad flat stone, having a slit in the upper
and a circular cavity in the lower half of the face." On
this once rested some round stones called Clachan Brath,
which visitors used to turn round sunwise, " for it is
thought," says Pennant, "that the brath, or end of the
world will not arrive till the stone on which they stand
is worn through."

Near the preceding, on the east, is a much worn slab
called The Pilgrim by Graham, from the figure, in a panel
at the top, of a man walking with long staff and wallet.
This stone was formerly on the Ridge of the Kings.

Beside the last is another old stone, " with a short sword
on the right side."

Among the modern gravestones of Reilig Odhrain
is a monument erected by the United States to sixteen
persons drowned in the wreck of the American ship " Guy
Mannering" on the west coast of the island, on the last
day of 1865.

PLATE 39. MACLEANS CROSS I WEST FACE.

Page 150.

THE CARVED STONES. 151

{MACLEAN'S CROSS (Plates 20 and 39).

A mediaeval wayside cross, by the road from the village
to Reilig Odhrain. It is carved from a thin slab of schist,
and rises to the height of a little over ten feet from its
pedestal of stones. The head is a circular disc, with cross-
arms projecting slightly from its circumference. On the west
face, the central figure is Our Lord crucified, in a long
robe ; a fleur-de-lys is on the top arm and a chalice on
one side arm of the cross-head. Both sides of the cross
are decorated with interlaced and foliage ornament. The
east face of the disc has only an ornamental pattern ; just
below it are two beasts ; and at the foot of the shaft is
a mounted knight, with helm and lance, drawn plainly in
Stuart's plate, but now hardly distinguishable. The foliage
pattern on the cross is like that on some of the slabs in
Reilig Odhrain, and it is thought to have been carved in
e fifteenth century, perhaps about the same time as
ackinnon's Cross, 1489. It might be in honour of the
Maclean chief of the time, as Mackinnon's is for the chief
of that smaller clan and his son the abbot. lona is in
the Maclean country, which consisted chiefly of Mull and
its surroundings.

IN THE NUNNERY.

PRIORESS ANNA (Plate 38). — The upper part of a slab
in low relief representing an Austin canoness. These nuns,
the female branch of the Canons Regular of St. Augustine,
appear in the later Middle Ages as the occupants of lona
Nunnery, which was founded for Benedictine Sisters. The
canonesses wore a white robe, and a linen rochet or close
fitting surplice, which appears under the cloak in the figure
of the Prioress. The head is on a pillow smoothed down by
little angels ; a round mirror and a comb are carved above ;

I$2 THE STORY OF IONA.

a little dog is represented on each side the figure, half way
down, probably emblematic of constancy. The other half of
the slab has been mostly broken away since Pennant
described and drew its subject — "the form of the Virgin
Mary, with head crowned and mitred, the child in her arms ;
and, to denote her Queen of Heaven, a sun and moon appear
above." His drawing confirms this description. There is no
doubt about the mitre. Now only the lower part of the
figure is left, with the inscription SANCTA MARIA ORA PRO
ME. Pennant gives the full inscription in the border of
the slab, the beginning of which is now lost — [HIC JACET
DOMINA ANNA DONALDI ] TERLETI FILIA QUONDAM
PRIORISSA DE IONA QUAE OBIIT ANO MD0XL°III EJUS
ANIMAM ALTISSIMO COMMENDAMUS (Here lies Lady Anna,
daughter of Donald Tearlach, sometime Prioress of lona,
who died in the year 1543. Her soul we commend to the
most High). A broken high cross at Soroby, in Tiree, has
been described and figured, on which the skeleton Death
leads by the hand a nun habited like Prioress Anna, with
the inscription underneath : HEC EST CRUX MICHAELIS
ARCHANGELI DEI. SOROR ANNA ABBATISSA DE Y (This
is the cross of Michael the archangel of God. Sister Anna,
Abbess of Y). No doubt this cross once stood in lona.
The superiors of the Nunnery do not appear to have been
entitled to the name of abbess, but this seems to be the same
lady as Prioress Anna.

The following gravestones in the Nunnery or its precincts
seem specially worthy of mention, in addition to the pre-
ceding.

A slab of mica schist, carved with " a cross of the whole
length of the stone, decorated with symmetrically arranged
patterns of interlaced work, filling the shaft, arms, and
summit, which are also connected by a circle." These are
characteristic of the Celtic period.

The two stones shown in the accompanying figures, one
of them carved with lotus-leaf ornament, and the other

THE CARVED STONES.

153

with a long slender ornamental cross, having above its
arms a foliage ornament and an animal.

Another with slender cross, and at the foot two pairs of
shears, point to point. A slab with panels at top and

bottom, and a pair of shears at the foot. One with illegible
inscription on a panel at the top, a cross of foliage pattern
below, and a mirror and comb. A defaced slab with cross
and interlaced pattern.

******

It has naturally been the lot of the Middle Ages to
leave more of these stone monuments in lona than earlier
times. They witness to some of the chequered history of
the island, though they hardly touch its most remote and
glorious past. It is rather the fair sea-beauty and imagina-
tive charm of the place that link us with the ancient simple

154 THE STORY OF IONA.

days of material poverty and spiritual fruitfulness. A Gaelic
prediction makes St. Columba speak from the vanished past
in words prophetic of what now is and what is yet to be : —

An I mo chridhe, I mo ghraidh,

An ait' guth manaich bidh geum ba ;
Ach mu'n tig an saoghal gu crich,

Bithidh I mar a bha.

In 7 of my heart, / of my love,

Instead of monk's voice shall be lowing of cows ;
But ere the world shall come to an end,
7 shall be as it was.

APPENDIX I.

UCHD AILIUN : AN OLD IRISH POEM.

DR. SKENE, writing of Cam Cul ri Eirinn in lona (C.S., II., p. 91),
says that " among the several poems attributed to Columba, there
is one which so remarkably describes the scene from this spot and
the emotions it was calculated to excite in one of his temperament,
that it is hardly possible to avoid the conclusion that it contains the
genuine expression of his feelings . . . The original of this interest-
ing poem is in one of the Irish MSS. in the Burgundian Library at
Brussels. It was transcribed and translated for the late Dr. Todd
by the late Professor O'Curry."

Columcille fecit.

DELIGHTFUL would it be to me to be in Uchd Ailiun

On the pinnacle of a rock,
That I might often see

The face of the ocean ;
That I might see its heaving waves

Over the wide ocean,
When they chant music to their Father

Upon the world's course ;
That I might see its level sparkling strand,

It would be no cause of sorrow ;
That I might hear the song of the wonderful birds,

Source of happiness ;
That I might hear the thunder of the crowding waves

Upon the rocks ;
That I might hear the roar by the side of the church

Of the surrounding sea ;
That I might see its noble flocks

Over the watery ocean ;
That I might see the sea monsters,

The greatest of all wonders ;
That I might see its ebb and flood

In their career ;
That my mystical name might be, I say,

Cul ri Erin ;

I $6 APPENDIX.

That contrition might come upon my heart

Upon looking at her ;
That I might bewail my evils all,

Though it were difficult to compute them ;
That I might bless the Lord

Who conserves all,
Heaven with its countless bright orders,

Land, strand, and flood ;
That I might search the books all,

That would be good for any soul ;
At times kneeling to beloved heaven ;

At times at psalm-singing ;
At times contemplating the King of Heaven,

Holy the chief;
At times at work without compulsion ;

This would be delightful.
At times plucking duilise from the rocks ;

At times at fishing ;
At times giving food to the poor ;

At times in a carcair.
The best advice in the presence of God

To me has been vouchsafed.
The King, whose servant I am, will not let

Anything deceive me.

APPENDIX II.

ALTUS PROSATOR: ST. COLUMBA'S HYMN.

THIS devout composition is written in the Latin of Columba's time,
it has always been believed to be by his own hand, and the tradition
is upheld in the learned edition of the Irish Liber Hymnorum by
Dr. Bernard and Dr. Atkinson, published by the Henry Bradshaw
Society.

A legend about four centuries later than Columba is attached tc
the hymn. According to this, he composed the Altus — in lona 01
Derry — to beg forgiveness for the battle of Cooldrevny, and two Irish
battles which occurred after he had settled in lona, but which arc
said to have been gained because of him. The scribe then adds an
alternative explanation. Ut alii dicunt, Columkill made the shorl
hymn Adjutor laborantium while carrying a bag of oats from the
stone in the refectory in lona to the mill, and then went on to com
pose the Altus during the grinding of the oats, which were the onlj

APPENDIX. 157

food they had to offer to messengers who came from Pope Gregory,
bearing gifts of a cross and a book of the hymns for the week.
When the messengers left, Columba gave them the Altus to present
to the Pope. The story is improbable, for one reason, because at
the date of Gregory's accession Columba was an old man near to
his death. The stone of the refectory seems, however, to be an
authentic detail of the ancient monastery. See page 103.

The hymn is alphabetical, the verses beginning with the letters
in order, like the sections of Psalm 119 in Hebrew. After praising
God for His works in creation — with descriptions that may well have
been inspired by the face of nature round about lona — the theme
passes to " the day of the Lord " with much of the terrible grandeur
of the Dies irae.

The Rev. Anthony Mitchell, Canon of Edinburgh, very kindly
not only allows me to print his metrical rendering of the hymn,
but has revised it for the occasion. I have inserted a few Bible
references where the allusion to Scripture is perhaps less obvious
than elsewhere. Canon Mitchell's translation appeared originally in
The Celtic Church in Scotland, an interesting book by the Right Rev.
Dhn Dowden, Bishop of Edinburgh.

of days, enthroned on high !
The Father unbegotten He,
Whom space containeth not, nor time ;

Who was, and is, and aye shall be :
And one-born Son, and Holy Ghost,

Who co-eternal glory share ;
One only God, of Persons Three,
We praise, acknowledge, and declare.

celestial first He made ;
Angels and archangels of light,
In Principalities and Thrones,

And mystic rank of Power and Might :
That Love and Mystery Divine

Not aimlessly alone might dwell,
But vessels have, wherein to pour
Full wealth of gifts ineffable.

QAST from the highest heights of heaven,

Far from the Angels' shining state,
Fadeth from glory Lucifer,

Falling in scorn infatuate.
Angels apostate share his fall,

Steeled with his hate, and fired with pride,
Banished from their fellows bright,

Who in the heavenly seats abide.

158 APPENDIX.

T")IREFUL and foul, the Dragon great,

Whose deadly rage was known of old,
The slippery serpent, wilier

Than living thing that earth doth hold :
From the bright realm of heaven he could

A third part of the stars entice,
In Hell's abyss to quench their light,

In headlong fall from Paradise.

17 ARTH next and heaven, sea and sky,

Found shape within the Eternal mind,
And stood created. Next appeared

The fruitful herb, and tree in kind :
Sun, moon, and stars that climb the heavens,

And birds and fishes, great and small,
And beasts and herds and living things,

And man to be the king of all.

pROM every glad Angelic tongue,

Soon as the stars sprung into light,
Burst forth the wondering shout that praised

The heavenly Creator's might (Job xxxviii, 7).
And, as His handiwork they viewed,

Arose from loving hearts and free
The tribute due of wondrous song,

Swelling in sweetest harmony.

'QAINST Satan's wiles and Hell's assault
Our primal parents could not stand :
And into new abysses fell

The leader and his horrid band ;
Fierce forms, with noise of beating wings,

Too dread for sight of mortal eye,
Who, fettered, far from human ken,

Within their prison houses lie.

T-IlM, banished from his first estate,
The Lord cast out for evermore ;
And now his wild and rebel crew

In upper air together soar (Eph. ii, 2 ; vi, 12).
Invisible, lest men should gaze

On wickedness without a name,
And, breaking every barrier down,

Defile themselves in open shame.

TN the three quarters of the sea
Three mighty fountains hidden lie,

Whence rise through whirling waterspouts
Rich-laden clouds that clothe the sky :

APPENDIX. 159

On winds from out his treasure-house

They speed to swell bud, vine, and grain,
While the sea-shallows emptied wait

Until the tides return again.

|£lNGS' earthly glory fleeteth fast,

And for a moment is its stay.
God hath all might ; and at a nod

The giants fall beneath His sway (Gen. vi, 4; Wisd. xiv, 6).
'Neath waters deep, with mighty pangs,

In fires and torments dread they rave,
Choked in the whirlpool's angry surge,

Dashed on the rocks by every wave.

T IKE one that through a sparing sieve
The precious grain doth slowly pour,
God sendeth down upon the earth

The cloud-bound waters evermore :
And from the fruitful breasts of heaven,

While changing seasons wax and wane,
The welcome streams that never fail

Pour forth in rich supplies of rain.

|yjARK how the power of God supreme

Hath hung aloft earth's giant ball (Job xxvi, 7),
And fixed the great encircling deep,

His mighty hand supporting all
Upon the pillars which He made,

The solid rocks, and cliffs that soar,
And on the sure foundations rest

That stand unmoved for evermore.

Js^ONE doubteth that within the earth
Glow the devouring flames of hell,
Wherein is prisoned darkest night

Where noisome beasts and serpents dwell,
Gehenna's old and awful moan,

And cries of men in anguish dire,
And falling tears, and gnashing teeth,

And thirst, and hunger's burning fire.

OF realms we read beneath the world

Where the departed spirits wait,
Who never cease to bend the knee

To Christ, the only Potentate.
They could not ope the written Book,

Whose seven seals none but He might break,
Fulfilling thus the Prophet's word,

That He should come, and victory make.

I6O APPENDIX.

PARADISE and its pleasant glades

From the beginning God did make ;
Out of whose fountain-head there flow

Four rivers sweet, earth's thirst to slake :
And midmost stands the tree of life,

With leaves that neither fade nor fall,
With healing to the nations frought,

Whose joys abundant never pall.

QUESTIONS the Singer,— "Who hath climbed

Sinai the mountain of the Lord ?
The echoing thunders who hath heard,

And ringing trumpet-blast outpoured ?
Who saw the lightning's dazzle whirl,

And heaving rocks that crashed and fell,
'Mid meteors' glare and darts of flame,

Save Moses, Judge of Israel ? "

the dawn ; — the day is near,
Day of the Lord, the King of kings ;
A day of wrath and vengeance just,

Of darkness, clouds, and thunderings ;
A day of anguished cries and tears,

When glow of woman's love shall pale ;
When man shall cease to strive with man,
And all the world's desire shall fail.

CJOON shall all mortals trembling stand

Before the Judge's awful throne,
And rendering the great account

Shudder each hateful sin to own.
Horror of night ! when none can work,

Wailing of men, and flooding tears,
Opening the books by conscience writ,

Riving of hearts with guilty fears.

•pHE trumpet of the archangel first

Shall blare afar its summons dread ;
And then shall burst earth's prison-bars,

And sepulchres give up their dead.
The ice of death shall melt away,

Whilst dust grows flesh, and bone meets bone,
And every spirit finds again

The frame that was before her own.

ANDERS Orion from heaven's height,
To thread his hidden eastern way
— Ere set the gleaming Pleiades —
Through bounds of ocean, day by day :

APPENDIX.

And Vesper, though his orbit's whirl
Be set twice twelve moons to endure,

One even by ancient paths returns,

— Types both of Him who cometh sure.*

l6l

Most High from heaven descends,
The Cross His sign and banner bright.
The sun in darkness shrouds his face,

The moon no more pours forth her light :
The stars upon the earth shall fall

As figs drop from the parent tree,
When earth's broad space is bathed in fire,
And men to dens and mountains flee.

YONDER in heaven the angel host

Their ever-ringing anthems raise,
And flash in maze of holy dance,

The Trinity Divine to praise :
The four-and-twenty elders cast
Their crowns before the Lamb on high,
And the four Beasts all full of eyes

Their ceaseless triple praises cry.

2EAL of the Lord, consuming fire,

Shall whelm the foes, amazed and dumb
Whose stony hearts will not receive

That Christ hath from the Father come :
But we shall soar our Lord to meet,

And so with Him shall ever be,
To reap the due rewards amidst

The glories of Eternity.

* In the daily motion of the stars, Orion sets a little before the Pleiades. The
thought is that he only disappears to reappear from his hidden course below the
ocean horizon, and is thus a type of the Second Advent. So is the planet Venus,
whose movements bring it back to the same position in the heavens in 584 days.
Venus is here simply called Vesperugo, the evening star, and the period is roughly
called two years. These things were known in St. Columba's time, and he himself
is said to have been versed in astronomical knowledge. (The substance of this note
is from the Liber Hymnorum editors. )

1 62 APPENDIX.

APPENDIX III.

THE GAELIC PLACE-NAMES ON THE MAP OF IONA.

THE names on the map opposite cannot all be interpreted. In the
case of Eilean Annraidh and Ard Annraidh at the N.E. end of
lona, Eilean means an island and Ard a height, but Annraidh is
doubtful. Eilean Ghbmain, on the Mull side, and E. Didel and
E. Musimul are also omitted from the following list. More is said
about some of the names in the body of the book.

Aoineadh nan Sruth. Cliff of the streams, or tides.

Camus Ciiil an t-Saimh. Bay of the ocean-nook.

Cam Cul ri Eirinn. Cairn of the back to Ireland.

Carraig an Daimh. Rock of the ox, or stag.

Cladh an Diseart. Burial-ground of the hermitage.

Cnoc Druidean. Hill of starlings. Or perhaps Cnoc Druidhean ;

Hill of the Druids, or wise men.
Cnoc M6r. Great hill.
Cnoc nam Bradhan. Hill of the querns.
Corr Eilean. Pointed or high island, or heron island.
Druim an Aoinidh. Ridge of the cliff.
Druim Dhughaill. Dugal's ridge.
Dun Bhuirg. Hill of the fort.
Diin-I. Hill of lona.

Eilean na h-Aon Chaorach. Island of one sheep.
Eilean nam Ban (Mull). Isle of the women.
Eilean Chalbha. Calf island. Norse — kalfr, a calf.
Eilean Dubh (Mull). Black or dark island.
Eilean Maolmhartainn. Maolmartin's island.
Eilean nam Muc (Mull). Isle of the pigs.

Erraid, or Earraid (Mull). From airidh, a sheiling or hill-pasture (?
Fionphort (Mull). White port.
Gleann an Teampuill. Glen of the church.
Laraichean. Ruins.
Loch Staonaig. Loch of the slope.
Lochan Mor. Great pond.
Machair A plain. A' Mhachair. The plain.
Port Ban. White bay.
Port na Curaich. Bay of the coracle.
Port an Diseart Port of the hermitage.
Port na Fraing. Port of France.
Port nam Mairtir. Bay of the martyrs.
Port na Muinntir. Port of the community, or people.
Port Ronain. St. Ronan's Bay.
Reidh Eilean. Level or smooth island.

Eilean Sf
;nnraidh£}

»>c?

pof*

-C1*'"^ o ^Kudhana.
»• o Carraig-geirt

/("'an Mfl h'Aon
Chaorae.h

Eilean
fSyGhomai
*/-

V

\lsland

Scale of Miles

O^l

MODERN IONA.

1 64 APPENDIX.

Rudha na Carraig-geire. Point of the sharp rock.
Sithean Mor. Great fairy-mound. This is the Angels' Hill.
Sligneach. Shelly place.
Soa. Sheep island. Norse — saudr, a sheep.
Stac an Aoinidh. Rock of the cliff.
Stac Mhic Mhurchaidh. MacMurdoch's rock.
. Traigh Bhan nam Manach. White beach of the monks.

APPENDIX IV.

THE ISLAND OF STAFFA (PLATE 40).

THE photograph opposite shows a true Hebridean scene of bare
rock, broad waters, and their denizens, but with its own character-
istics in the tier of basaltic columns, in which waves and weather
have carved marvellous caverns. The hollow towards the left is the
great arch of Fingal's Cave, rising 66 feet from the sea at mean tide,
and overhung by a further height of 30 feet of cliff.

The name Staffa is Norwegian in origin ; the appearance of the
columns led the cruising Vikings of long ago to call the island stafr,
a staff. It lies in full view from the north end of lona, seven miles
away ; and St. Columba and his monks and their successors often
sailed to and fro past its frowning face, but there is nothing to show
that they ever took any notice of it — unless, indeed, it be the twelfth
stanza of the Saint's Altus Prosator, which runs thus in a literal
translation : —

By the divine powers of the great God is suspended

the globe of earth, and thereto is set the circle of the great deep,

supported by the strong hand of God Almighty ;

promontories and rocks sustaining the same,

with columns like to bars on solid foundations,

immoveable like so many strengthened bases.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.

THE following list includes most of the books and papers which
have been used : —

Abbott. Celtic Ornaments from the Book of Kells. 1895.

Adamnan (ob. 704). Vita Sancti Columbae.

Adamnan. De Locis Sanctis. In Migne's Patrologia Latina, Ixxxviii.

Allen. Celtic Art in Pagan and Christian Times. 1904.

Allen and Anderson. Early Christian Monuments in Scotland. 1903.

Anderson. Scotland in Early Christian Times. 1881.

Annals of Ireland by the Four Masters. Compiled from older sources in

the I7th century. Edited by O'Donovan, 1856.
Annals of Tighernach. 1188. In O'Conor's Rerum Hibernicarum

Scriptores Veteres, 1826.
nals of Ulster. A 15th-century compilation. Edited by Hennessy

and MacCarthy, 1901.
yll, Duke of. lona. 1878.
Bangor Antiphoner (temp. 680-691). Ed. by Warren, Henry Bradshaw

Soc., 1893.

Bede (ob. 735). Opera Historica. Plummer, 1896.
Bede. De Vita et Miraculis S. Cuthberti. Migne's P.L., xciv.
Bollandists. Acta Sanctorum.
Boswell. Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson,

LL.D. Carruthers' edition, 1852.
Breviarium Aberdonense, 1510. Reprint, 1855.
Bury. Life of St. Patrick. 1905.
Cameron. Gaelic Names of Plants. 1883.
Campbell (Lord Archibald). Records of Argyll. 1885.
Carmichael. Carmina Gadelica. 1900.
Champneys. Irish Ecclesiastical Architecture. In Architectural Review,

1905-6.
Chronicle of Man and the Sudreys. Ed. of 1874, Munch and Goss, who

add the Papal documents about lona.

Chronicle of the Picts and Scots. 1251. In Skene's Chronicles.
Chronicle of the Scots and Picts. 1187. In Skene.
Clanranald, The Book of. History of the Lords of the Isles by the

Macvurichs, as hereditary Sennachies. Gaelic text and translation

in Cameron's Reliquiae Celticae, vol. 2, 1894. Transl. of part in

Skene's C. S.
Colgan. Triadis Thaumaturgae seu Divorum Patricii, Columbae, et

Brigidae Acta. 1647.

1 66 BIBLIOGRAPHY.

Collingwood. Viking-age Cross at lona. In Saga-book of the Viking

Club, 1904.
Craven. Records of the Dioceses of Argyll and the Isles, 1560-1860.

1907.
Dewick. Consecration Crosses and the Ritual connected with them.

1908. From the Archaeological Journal.
Dowden. The Celtic Church in Scotland. 1894.
Drummond. Sculptured Monuments in lona and the West Highlands.

1881.

Dudden. Gregory the Great. 1905.
Ewing. lona. 1872.

Ferguson. History of Architecture, vol. 2. 1867.
Fordun. Chronica (1385 or 1386). Skene's ed., 1871.
Fowler. Adamnan's St. Columba. Text and notes, 1894. Translation,

1895.

Freer (A. Goodrich). Outer Isles. 1904.
Geikie. Text-book of Geology. 1903.
Gillies. The Place- Names of Argyll. 1906.
Graham. Antiquities of lona. 1850.

Gregory. History of the Western Highlands and Isles of Scotland. 1836
Haddan and Stubbs. Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents relating

to Great Britain and Ireland. 1873.
Highland Society Gaelic Dictionary. 1828.
Honeyman. The Shrine of Saint Columba at lona. 1906. From the

Scottish Ecclesiological Society's Transactions.
Hunt. History of the English Church, vol. i. 1899.
Huyshe. Adamnan's St. Columba. Translation and brief notes.
Innes and Brichan. Origines Parochiales Scotiae. 1855.
lona Marble. A paper in The Quarry, December 1907.
Irish Liber Hymnorum. Bernard and Atkinson's edition, H. Bradshaw

Soc., 1897.
Irish Life of St. Columba (loth cent.) Translated from the Leabhar

Breac by Hennessy, in Skene, C. S.
Johnston. Place-Names of Scotland. 1903.
Joyce. Origin and History of Irish Names of Places. 1870.
Joyce. Social History of Ancient Ireland. 1903.
Keith. An Historical Catalogue of Scottish Bishops down to 1688.

With Spottiswoode, An Account of all the Religious Houses that

were in Scotland at the Time of the Reformation. Edited by Russel.

1824.

Lightfoot. Leaders in the Northern Church. 1892.
Lockyer. Stonehenge and other British Stone Monuments. 1906.
M'Alpine. Gaelic Dictionary. 1903 edition.

MacBain. Etymological Dictionary of the Gaelic Language. 1896.
MacBrayne. Guide to Staffa and lona.

MacGibbon and Ross. The Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland. 1896.
M'Gregor (1512). The Dean of Lismore's Book. A collection of old

Gaelic poetry ; edited by M'Lauchlan, Thomas, and Skene, 1862.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.

Mackenzie. History of the Macleods. 1889.

Mackinlay. Folk-Lore of Scottish Lochs and Springs. 1893.

Mackinlay. Influence of the pre-Reformation Church on Scottish Place-
names. 1904.

Maclean (J. P.) History of the Clan Maclean. 1889.

Macmillan (H.) An Early Celtic College. A paper on Elachnave con-
sidered as Hinba, in Eraser's Magazine, November 1880.

Macmillan (A.) and Brydell. lona. 1898.

Macvurich. See Clanranald.

Martin. Description of the Western Islands of Scotland. 1703.

Monro. Description of the Western Isles of Scotland, called Hybrides
( 1 549). Edition of 1 774.

Moore. History of the Isle of Man. 1900.

Muir. Characteristics of Old Church Architecture in Scotland. 1861.

Muir. Ecclesiological Notes on some of the Islands of Scotland. 1885.

Munro. Prehistoric Scotland.

New Statistical Account of Scotland. 1847.

Nicholson. Keltic Researches. 1904.

Oengus (or Angus). The Martyrology of Oengus the Culdee (c. 800).
Whitley Stokes, in H. Bradshaw Soc., 1905.

O'Reilly. Irish-English Dictionary. 1821.

Ordericus Vitalis (ob. c. 1143). Historia Ecclesiastica. In P ,L. clxxxviii.

Ordnance Survey of Scotland. Maps of Argyllshire.

Patrick (St.) Ad Coroticum. 5th cent. P. L. liii.

Pennant. Voyage to the Hebrides. 1772.

Petrie and Stokes. Christian Inscriptions in the Irish Language. 1878.

Pikorny. The Origin of Druidism. In the Celtic Review, 1908.

Poole. Historical Atlas of Modern Europe. 1902.

Reeves. Adamnan's St. Columba ; text and notes, 1857. Also re-edited
by Skene, with transl. by Bp. Forbes, 1874.

Reeves. The Culdees of the British Isles. 1864.

Reeves. Ecclesiastical Antiquities of Down, Connor, and Dromore.

1847-

Reeves. The Island of Tiree. In Ulster Journal of Archaeology, 1854.
Registrum Magni Sigilli Regum Scotorum, vol. I (A.D. 1424-1513). 1882.
Rhys. Celtic Britain. 1904.
Sacheverell. An Account of the Isle of Man, with a Voyage to I-columb-

kill in the year 1688. 1702.

Seneachie. An Account of the Clan Maclean, by a Seneachie. 1838.
Sinclair. The Clan Fingon. In the Celtic Review, July 1907-
Skene. Celtic Scotland. 1890.
Skene. Chronicles of the Picts, Chronicles of the Scots, and other early

Memorials of Scottish History. 1867.
Skene. The Coronation Stone. 1869.

Skene. The Highlanders of Scotland. MacBain's ed., 1902.
Skene. Notes on the Earlier Establishments at lona. In Proceedings

of Soc. of Antiquaries of Scotland, 1875.
Skene. Notes on the History of the Ruins at lona. P.S.A.S., 1876.

1 68 BILIOGRAPHY.

Smith (G. Gregory). The Book of Islay. 1895.

Smith and Wace. Dictionary of Christian Biography. 1887.

Spottiswoode. See Keith.

Statistical Account of Scotland. 1798.

Stephen. History of the Scottish Church. 1894.

Stokes (G. T.) Ireland and the Celtic Church. 1888.

Stokes (Whitley). On the Linguistic Value of the Irish Annals. A

paper in Bezzenberger's Beitrage zur Kunde der Indogermanischen

Sprachen, Gottingen, 1892.
Stokes (Whitley.) See Oengus.
Strabo, Walafrid (ob. 849). Vita S. Blaitmaici, in P. L. cxiv. The same

in the Bollandists for Jan. 19, De SS. Martyribus Blaithmaco pres-

bytero aliisque Hyensibus monachis.
Stuart. Sculptured Stones of Scotland. 1867.
Stubbs. Registrum Sacrum Anglicanum ; the Course of Episcopal

Succession in England. 1897.
Torffaeus (=Torfesen). Orcades. 1697.
Trenholme (N. M.) The Right of Sanctuary in England. University of

Missouri Studies, 1903.

Usher. Britannicarum Ecclesiarum Antiquitates. 1687.
Warren. Liturgy and Ritual of the Celtic Church. 1881.
Watson. Place-Names of Ross and Cromarty. 1904.
Wilson. Guide to Staffa and lona. 1893.

GENERAL INDEX.

ABERDEEN, mission to, 47.

Adamnan, abbot, 59-61.

Aidan, bp. of Lindisfarne, 56.

Aidan, k. of Dalriada, 43, 49, 50.
: Ailean nan Sop ; see Maclean.

Alastair or Alexander, Lord of the
Isles, 88.

Angels' Hill, 35, 108, 109.
! Angus MacMuircetaigh, anchorite,
tanist abbot, 74.

Angus Oig, Lord of the Isles, 85.
i Anlaf, Danish k. of Dublin, 75.

Anna, prioress, 93, 151, 152.

Aodh Cama-chasach, effigy of, 143.

Artchain, monastery in Tiree, 41.

Artgal, k. of Connaught, 65.

Augustine, archpriest, 77, 78.

Awley O'Freel, abbot, 8r.

Bagli, viking, 84.

Baithen, abbot, 53, 54.

Beatrice, prioress, 83.

Beccan, hermit of Rum, 57.

Benedictines, 80, 82.

Beton gravestone, 149, 150.

Birkibein, viking, 84.

Black Stones of lona, 86, 121.

Blathmac, martyr, 68, 69.

Bloody Bay sea-fight, 89, 92.

Boulder, the great, 8, 103.

Breasal, abbot, 65, 66.

Brendan (St.) of Clonfert, 16, 21,

38.

Broichan the Druid, 36, 39.
Brude mac Bile, k. of the Picts, 60.
Brude mac Mailchon, k. of the

Picts, 26, 39, 40, 47.

Cadroe, monk, 74.
Caencomhrac, abbot, 74.

Campbell, Earl of Argyll, 91, 93.

Campbell ; Pal an Sporain's grave-
stone, 140, 141.

Cam Cul ri Eirinn, 25, ill, 112.

Cathedral, 91, 95, 113-117.

Celestine, abbot, 80, 81.

Cellach, abbot, 67, 68.

Cellach, ab. of Kildare and lona,
70.

Cellach, bp. in Mercia, 56.

Celtic art, 10, 32, 73, 138.

Celtic Church, 30, 76, 79, 80.

Celtic gravestones, 137, 138, 142,

143-

Charles I., 95.

Cill Chainnich, 127, 128, 137.
Cill-maghobhannain, 102.
Cillene Droicteach, abbot, 64.
Cillene Fada, abbot, 64.
Clach Brath, 150.
Cladh Chainnich, 127.
Cladh an Diseart ; see Disert.
Cladh nan Druineach, 130, 131.
Cnoc Ciarain (St. Kieran's Hill),

109.

Cnoc Druidean, 109, 162.
Cnoc Odhrain (St. Oran's Hill), 37,

109.

Co-arb, title of, 72.
Colman, bp. of Lindisfarne, 56, 58.
Columba (St.), cc. iii-v ; relics, 68-

71, 115; "tomb," 69, 70, 118,

119; "pillow," 136.
Comgall (St.) of Bangor, 21, 38-41.
Conall, k. of Dalriada, 15, 26.
Conall Gulban, 14.
Conamhail, abbot, 62.
Connachtach, abbot, 67.
Constantine I., king, 71.
Cooldrevny, battle, 22, 23.

I/O

GENERAL INDEX.

Cormac, monk, 38, 47.
Coronation Stone, 70.
Crane from Ireland, story of, 35.
Croisean Mora (Na), 101.
Crosses of lona, 73, 138.
Cross, Mackinnon's, 137.
Cross, Maclean's, 151.
Cross, St. John's, 138.
Cross, St. Martin's, 139.
Cross, St. Matthew's, 138, 139.
Culdees, 78, 79.
Culloden, battle, 96.
Cummian the Fair, abbot, 58.
Cymric Celts, 13.

Dalian ForgailPs Amhra, or Praises

of Columkill, 44, 48, 52.
Dalriada or Argyll founded, 14, 15 ;

boundary cairns, 112.
Danes attack lona, 66-68, 75.
Deer, monastery, 46.
Dermid, abbot, 68.
Derry, monastery, 22.
Diarmaid, k. of Ireland, 22, 23.
Diormit, monk, 25, 36, 49, 51,

54-

Disert ( = hermitage), 78, 104, 105.
Disertach, 77, 78.
Diuma, bp. in Mercia, 56.
Donald, Lord of the Isles, 87.
Donald MacMurcadha, robber, 74.
Donnan of Eigg, martyr, 46, 54.
Dorbene Fada, 62, 63.
Drostan (St.), 46.
Druidism, ch. ii.
Druim an Aoinidh (Ridge of the

Cliff), in.
Druim Dhughaill (Dugal's Ridge),

no.

Drumceitt convention, 44.
Dubsidhe, lector, 77, 78.
Dumbarton, 48.
Dun Bhuirg, 108.
Dun-I, 98 ; view from, 3.
Dun nam Manach, 120.
Dunchadh, abbot, 62, 63.
Dunchadh (2), abbot, 77.
Dunkeld and lona, 68, 85, 88.

Eala, hillock by Martyrs' Bay, 130.
Easter controversy, 30, 54, 55, 61,

63-
Echoid Buidhe, k. of Dalriada, 49,

So.
Egfrid, k. of Northumbria, buried

in lona, 60.
Eigg, island, 46.
Eilean na h-Aon Chaorach (Isle of

One Sheep), in.
Eilean nam Ban (Isle of the

Women), 33.

Eilean Maolmhartainn, 109.
Eithne, St. Columba's mother, 20.
Elachnave, probably the ancient

Hinba, 16, 17, 38, 43.
Eoghan, a' Chinn Bhig ; see Mac-
lean.

Ere, a robber, 33.
Erca, daughter of Loarn Mor, 15.
Ernan, monk, 24, 38.

Faelcu, abbot, 63.
Failbhe, abbot, 55, 59.
Fairy-mounds, 12, 108, 109.
Feidhlimidh, St. Columba's father,

20.

Feidhlimidh Beg, monk, 63-65.
Feradhach, abbot, 71.
Fergna Brit, abbot, 37, 54.
Ferquhard, bishop, 93.
Fiachra, arcinnech, 74.
Finan, bp. of Lindisfarne, 27, 56.
Findchan, monk, 41.
Finghin, anchorite and bishop, 74.
Finlagan, monk, 43.
Finlay, abbot elect, 85.
Finnian of Moville, 21-23.
Flann, abbot, 71.
Flannobhra, co-arb, 76.
France, king of, 144.

Gaelic Celts, 10.

Gaelic epitaphs, 137, 138, 142, 143.

Garadh Eachainn Oig (Young

Hector's Field), in.
Gartnaidh, k. of the Picts, 47, 48-
Glasgow, 48, 49.

GENERAL INDEX.

171

Gleann an Teampuill (Glen of the

Church), 8 1, 108.
Godred, k. of Man, buried in lona, 79.

Hermit life, 18, 19, 104.
Hermit's Cell, 106, 107.
Hinba Island ; see Elachnave.
Horse, the white, 50, 102.

Iberians, 10.

Innrechtach, abbot, 70.

loan the Scot, 43.

lomaire an Achd (Ridge of the
Decree), 102, 103.

lomaire nan Righ (Ridge of the
Kings), 126.

lomaire an Tachair (Ridge of the
Causeway), 105, 106.

lona, names of, 1-3 ; general de-
scription, 5-9 ; topography, cc.
xi-xiii ; monastic life in, 28-33 ;
possession disputed, 95 ; passes
to Duke of Argyll, 95, 96.

John of Isla, Lord of the Isles,

85-87.
John, last Lord of the Isles, 89.

Kells, 67 ; Book of, 32, 67.

Kenneth (St.), 21, 38, 39, 48, 127,
128.

Kenneth Mac Alpine, king, 70, 124.

Kentigern or Mungo, bp. of Glas-
gow, 26, 48, 49.

Kieran (St.), 16, 21.

Kings buried in lona, 124-126, 144.

Kingarth, monastery, 42.

Knox, bp. Andrew, 94, 95.

Knox, bp. Thomas, 94, 95.

Laisren, abbot, 35, 54.
Laraichean, in, 162.
Lindisfarne mission, 56, 57.

arn Mor, k. of Dalriada, 15, 124,

125.

ch Awe, " cell " on, 42.
Loch Staonaig, 109.
Lochan Mor, 7, 105.

MacBaetan, abbot, 76.
Macdonald clan, 84.
Maldonald gravestone, 140.
Macdonald, bp. Angus, 88.
Macdonald, Ranald, 88.
Macdonald ; see the various Lords

of the Isles.
MacForcellaigh, head of Culdees,

77-

MacGilladuff, disertach, 77, 78.
Macgillrescol, prior, effigy of, 140.
Machair, 108.

Machar (St.) ; see Mochonna.
Maclan, 90, 93, 135, 136.
Mackenzie, abbot, 134.
Mackinnon, Fingon, abbot, 87. '
Mackinnon, John, ab. and bp., 90-

93, 133, 134, 137-
Maclean clan, 145.
Maclean —

Agnes, prioress, 92.

Ailean nan Sop, 146.

Eoghan a' Chinn Bhig, 149.

Marion, prioress, 94.

Mary Farquhardson, prioress, 93.

Neil of the Ross, 135.
Maclean of Coll, 148, 149.
Maclean of Duart, 146, 147 —

Lachlan Lubanach, 85, 86.

Hector Roy, 87, 145, 146.

Hector Odhar, 89, 90.

Lachlan, 90, 92, 93.

Lachlan Cattanach, 93, 147.

Hector, 94.

Sir Lachlan, 95.
Maclean of Gruline, 141.
Maclean of Lochbuie, 147, 148—

Hector Reaganach, 86.

John, 90.

Macleod of Harris, 89, 93, 134, 135-
Macleod of Lewis, 89, 91, 92> *45-
Macquarrie, 141, 142.
Macrory, Allan, 89, 92.
Macrory, Ranald, 93.
Maelbride, abbot, 76.
Maelpatrick O'Banain, Irish bp.,

79-
Maelpatrick's gravestone, 143.

172

GENERAL INDEX.

Magh Lunge, monastery in Tiree,
41, 59, 66.

Magh Lunge Well in lona, 41, 99.

Magnus, k. of Norway, 77.

Malcolm Canmore, king, 76.

Man, cathedral in, 77, 88.

Marble, lona, 8, 9.

Margaret (St.), 76.

Mercia, mission to, 56, 57.

Miathi, battle with, 49, 50.

Mill-stream, 99.
»-Mobhi of Glasnevin, 21, 22.

Mochonna, monk, 25, 47.

Monastery of lona, 27 ; repaired,
59; site, 101-103: second mon-
astery, 68, 72, 118-120: Bene-
dictine monastery, 82, 87, 94,
ch. xii.

Monasticism, 17, 18.

Mughron, abbot, 74, 75.

Neil of the Ross ; see Maclean.
Niall of the Nine Hostings, k. of

Ireland, 14.

Niall Frassach, k. of Ireland, 65.
Ninidh of Mull, 16.
Norwegians, 71, 76, 77, 85.
Nunnery, 128, 129.
Nuns of lona, 83, 92, 94.

O'Brolchan, Donald, 113, 114.

O'Brolchan, Flaherty, 77.

Oran, monk, 25 (footnote), 37.

Oran, Stone of, 142.

Orkney Isles, 47.

Ospac Hacon, 84.

Oswald, k. of Northumbria, 55, 56.

Papal letters, 80, 84, 86.

Patrick (St.), 14.

Picts, 14.

Pigeons' Cave, no.

Pilgrims, 76.

Poll-eirinn, 108.

Port Aoineadh nan Sruth (Bay of

the Cliff of the Streams), in.
Port Aoineadh an Taghain (Bay of

Polecat Cliff), in.

Port a3 Chroisein (Bay of the Little
Cross), 61, 129.

Port na Curaich (Bay of the
Coracle), no.

Port an Diseart (Port of the Her-
mitage), 105.

Port na Fraing (Bay of France), 99.

Port Goirtean lomhair (Bay of
Ivor's Field), no.

Port na Muinntir, 121, 122.

Port nam Mairtir (Bay of the
Martyrs), 67, 130 ; otherwise
Port nam Marbh (Bay of the
Dead), 130.

Port Ronain, 129, 130.

Reginald of the Isles, 80, 83, 84,

143, 144-

Reilig Odhrain, 37, 123-126.
Richmond, Rev. Legh, 96.
Ronan (St.), 42, 64.
Rydderch, British king, 48.

St. Mary's Chapel, 121.

St. Oran's Chapel, 126, 127.

St. Oran's Well, 127.

St. Ronan's Chapel, 86, 129.

Sacheverell, governor of Man, 95.

Scots or Irish, 14, 15.

Seghine, abbot, 54-57.

Sgeirnam Mart (Rock of the Cows),

75, 99-

Shipwrecks, 65.
Sithean Beag (Little Fairy-mound),

109.
Sithean Mor (Great Fairy-mound) ;

see Angels' Hill.
Skye, St. Columba in, 44.
Slebhine, abbot, 65.
Soa (Sheep Island), 31, in, 164.
Somerled, 77, 79.
Spouting Cave, 109.
Stac Mhic Mhurchaidh (Macmur-

doch's Rock), 74, 164.
Statutes of Icolmkill, 94.
Stone, lona, 9, no.
Straid nam Marbh (Street of the

Dead), 129, 130.

GENERAL INDEX.

173

Suibhne, abbot, 57.
Suibhne (2), abbot, 65.

Tay, river, 48.

Teampull Ronain, 86.

Teltown, synod at, 23.

Tobar na h-Aois (Well of the Age),

98.

Tobar a' Cheathain, 12 1.
Tobar na Gaoith Tuaith (Well of

the North Wind), 107.

Tobar Mhagh Luinge (Well of

Magh Lunge), 41, 99.
Tobar Odhrain ; see St. Oran's Well.
Torr Abb (Abbot's Hill), 120.
Tower, round, 72, 73, 118.
Traigh Bhan nam Manach (White

Beach of the Monks), 75, 99.
Trondhjem, primacy of, 77, 85, 88.

Well ; see Tobar.

Wells, magic, 11, 12, 98, 107.

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